Ivor Guild.

Lawyer and businessman.

Born: 2 April 1924;

Died: 3 January 2015

Ivor Guild, who has died aged 90, personified all that was Edinburgh. The complete Establishment figure, he was a businessman, Writer to the Signet, company director, club man, clerk to the Abbey Court of Holyroodhouse and chairman of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. In his time, nothing of note happened in the capital without his face or name featuring in it.

Tall, spare and never less than immaculately though soberly dressed, Mr Guild was actually born in Dundee rather than Edinburgh and had family roots stretching back generations into Angus.

Modest and self-effacing, he wore deep knowledge lightly. His lifetime of understatement was overscored by a simply astonishing number and range of interests, abilities and achievements. A partner in the longstanding law firm of Shepherd & Wedderburn for some 45 years, he was registrar to the synod of the Episcopal Church in Scotland from 1967, chairman of the Edinburgh Investment Trust for two decades as well as having directorships and interests in other companies over many years. He served three Lord Lyons as procurator-fiscal of Lyon Court, and his learning saw him elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters.

His private passions - if the word "passion" might be applied to someone so naturally restrained - were heraldry and genealogy. He edited the journal of the Scottish Genealogy Society for a generation, and spent a lifetime tracing his and the family histories of many others. He found that though both his parents were from Tayside, his familial line led to Clackmannanshire. An active member of the Heraldry Society of Scotland, he proved a familiar and welcome attendee at their meetings.

His claim to fame (a term he would certainly have abjured) was that the New Club in Edinburgh was his residence for 58 years. In 1957, then New Club secretary Charles Ballantyne approached Mr Guild with the suggestion that since he, like his father Col, Arthur Guild, had been a longstanding member of the club and was then living in rented rooms, he might like to consider renting one of two self-contained flats within it. He did, and became one of only nine on the electoral roll registered as living on Princes Street.

Ivor Reginald Guild was educated at Cargilfield, Rugby and the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. He quickly made his name both as a golfer of some ability, and someone able to network long before the term was invented. Perhaps it was his ability not to stand in spotlights which made him the trusted figure he became. Immensely courteous and dignified, he never said a wrong word, but this is to deny him his fund of dry humour and capacity for a good yarn. Invited to contribute to a book on the history of the New Club, his memoir is full of names, incidents and anecdotes - though always the subject was no longer alive.

His quiet faith and absolute fairness of approach coloured his life and his actions, and it was no surprise that when he recorded personal arms in 1957, his motto was Be Just And Fear Not. Appointed procurator-fiscal by Lord Lyon Sir Thomas Innes of Learney in 1960, his duties included regulating the use of heraldry in Scotland, primarily to ensure that no one appropriated the arms of another. His firmness extended almost to rule by rod of iron, though his preferred choice lay in "a fierce letter" to frighten off the usurper. He cared deeply for both Scotland's heraldic heritage and for the promotion of heraldry in the modern-day nation.

For all that Mr Guild apparently exemplified a slow-moving Edinburgh Establishment, he himself could be fleet of foot. In 2006, I approached him for a contribution to a book of heraldry I was editing. By return of post came 1500 carefully crafted words, within which lay the tale of a major UK airline whose tailfin bore arms unauthorised in Scotland - and he had warned the airline beforehand that it was required to matriculate arms in Scotland before flying here. Though he himself did not mention the offender by name, I more than enjoyed his story of his winning contretemps with British Airways.

Mr Guild died while on holiday in Berlin. He was a brother, uncle and cousin as well as a friend to many. Always a very private person, his final wishes were that his funeral be private, and that there would be no memorial service.

GORDON CASELY