Our speaker on Thursday 19th November 2015 was Dairmid Gunn O.B.E.
The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club is exceedingly fortunate to have Lt Commander Diarmid Gunn OBE as one its longest standing and most loyal and effective members.
Diarmid has been on the Council for more than twenty years and as our Chairman saw the Club’s transition from the twentieth century to this one.
Diarmid was a career officer with the Royal Navy for 20 years serving in Korea and at Suez and of course, since this was the period of the Cold War, at Dartmouth he had learned Russian and as a result he was appointed the Assistant Naval Attache in Moscow and developed a life-long attachment to the country
Diarmid’s OBE came not from his naval service but for his services to Scottish agriculture as Director of the Scottish Agricultural Organisation and his co-ordination of the British Food and Farming Campaign promoted by the Duke of Edinburgh.
But, most importantly for us, Diarmid’s roots are in the highlands. His parents hailed from Caithness and Sutherland and his uncle was the writer Neil Gunn who was one of the group of influential Scottish fiction writers working in the first half of the 20th century and whose literary estate Diarmid looks after.
In this talk Diarmid casts a highlander’s eye over the way Sir Walter Scott perceived and portrayed the Highlands and Highlanders
Download it here:
Above Image Copyright "Lee Live: Photographer" (Used with Permission)