Author, painter, journalist and harbour master at Crail; Born 1929; Died February 4, 2008. ROGER Banks, who has died aged 78, was a botanical artist, extensively published writer, period-house restorer, expert on the Antarctic and "harbour master emeritus" at Crail, the East Neuk of Fife fishing village. There he gained considerable notoriety for his habit of serving nervous dinner guests road kill and pates made from parts of various animals washed up on the beach.
Banks, the son of a master fish merchant, was born in Croydon and educated at Epsom College and St Andrews University, where he studied history.
Charming, curious and alarmingly bright, his first major career move after university was to sign on, in 1952, as part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, on a voyage to the Antarctic, later claiming that the trip taught him two important things that fascinated him all his life: how to execute gros point and how to paint flowers in watercolour.
The three-year expedition inspired his first book, The Unrelenting Ice (1962), as well as a profound interest in the vulnerability of the planet, which was reflected in his almost fanatical hatred of waste and wanton consumerism, which stayed with him for most if his life.
Returning from the Antarctic, he studied watercolour painting under Mary Grierson at Kew, a skill that was to be his bread and butter for the rest of his life. His paintings can be found in the collections of HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, HM Queen Margrethe of Denmark, the botanical library of the British Museum and countless private homes through his many exhibitions in National Trust properties.
In 1964, he married Jane, though the union was threatened early on when she came into contact with her new husband's obsessive hatred of waste as they dined in an Italian restaurant. Broke as usual, Banks could only afford a pea risotto but was quick to rush across the restaurant to beg some abandoned langoustine off the plates of an alarmed American couple.
Back in Scotland, the couple bought Dalgairn - a semi-derelict eighteenth-century mansion near Cupar - for £3000. They restored their home with impeccable taste over 18 years.
Later, Banks - a newspaper gardening correspondent for some years - was to open his gardens to the public with typical eccentricity, advertising it as The Shabby Garden and making a great deal of the beauty of weeds. The garden was a delight; many of the plants bore luggage labels, some of which offered cooking instructions.
Such cheerful flippancy hid a very sharp, if unpretentious, mind and his books from this period included Living in a Wild Garden (1980) and Old Cottage Garden Flowers (1983), both amusingly illustrated with his esoteric and fastidious watercolours.
In 1985, the couple sold Dalgairn and moved to the tiny and enchanting Lobster Cottage in picturesque Crail. There Banks noticed the post of harbour master was vacant.
The role carried little financial reward but did come with a "golden hello" of a new pair of blue serge trousers and the additional attraction of a small office, which soon doubled as his painting studio.
Dinner parties at the Banks's were not always as relaxing for the guests as they were for the hosts, as the events would often feature road kill - female fox bourguignon was a house speciality, perhaps preceded by a pate made from the liver of a washed-up seal.
Banks was, nonetheless, a generous host and enjoyed entertaining a wide variety of friends, who varied from dukes and duchesses to the local fishermen.
Jane died in 1996 and Banks was never quite the same, growing increasingly dependent on his pug dogs for companionship. That was not without its problems: he was once arrested for driving with one pug over his knees for warmth and one behind his head for comfort. When the police charged him with carrying an unsecured load, he argued that this habit was not unsafe as the dogs had already travelled many hundreds of miles in the same position without injury. It did little to help his cause. He was found guilty and had six penalty points added to his licence.
Banks is survived by his daughter, Thomasina, and two grand-daughters.
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