1995

Our President in 1995/6 was:

Paul H. Scott

He proposed the Toast to Sir Walter at our 87th Annual Dinner on Friday 2nd March 1996 in The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh

Paul Henderson Scott (born 7th November 1920, died 16th March 2019) was a soldier, diplomat and tireless advocate for Scottish independence. He was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Royal High School and Edinburgh University. He was an artillery officer in the Second World War, and from 1945 to 1949 was a military administrator in Berlin. He then entered the diplomatic service and served in many different countries, including Poland, Bolivia, Cuba, Canada, Austria and Italy.

After his retiral in 1980 he returned to Edinburgh and campaigned not only for Scottish independence but also for many related cultural causes, including the establishment of a National Theatre of Scotland and saving the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from closure. At the age of 19 he had joined the then recently established Saltire Society: he was both a President and Convenerof the Society, and engaged in the councils and executive committees of the Scottish National Party, the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, the Scottish Centre for International PEN and the Scottish Poetry Library. He was also Rector of Dundee University, 1989-91. He wrote numerous books, including Walter Scott and Scotland (1981), John Galt (1985), Scotland in Europe: Dialogue with a Sceptical Friend (1992) and an autobiography, A Twentieth Century Life (2002). He had a lifelong interest in and appreciation of Sir Walter Scott, and produced a new edition of Scott’s Letters of Malachi Malagrowther (1981).

Text source: James Roberton (used with permission)