Sheriff Stanley Scott Robinson died in his 85th year at the Highland Hospice, in Inverness, on August 10.

An Edinburgh man, Scott, as he was universally known, had a highly-distinguished legal career in addition to a ''good war'', which saw him rise to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Artillery in 1945. He was a keen supporter of the arts throughout his adult life.

Educated at Edinburgh's Boroughmuir Academy and Edinburgh University, Scott's legal career started in 1935 in Montrose, with well-known solicitors' firm Campbell, Middleton, Burness, and Dickson, an old practice founded by a cousin of the national poet Robert Burns.

In 1939 Scott was commissioned in the Royal Artillery and saw action with the British Expeditionary Force before being evacuated from Dunkirk on the fall of France.

In 1944 he retuned to the France with the D-Day landings and fought his way through Normandy, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, where he received the surrender of the town of Oldenburg. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and received the military version o f the Order of the British Empire.

He resumed his career in general practice and in 1972 he was among the first of solicitors to be elevated to the shrieval bench.

He came to Inverness in 1973, where, despite his slight stature, he made a formidable presence on the bench. His unfailing old world courtesy masked a most agile legal brain.

He retired in 1985 although he continued to sit on the bench long afterwards as an honorary sheriff.

Sheriff Scott Robinson served on the council of the Law Society for Scotland for nine years, latterly as vice president.

His books on the law pertaining to game and angling as well as interdict have become standard text books, while his study of Scots law inspired many articles in the Soceity's Journal.

He retained his interest in military matters and subsequently won the Territorial Decoration.

His active involvement in the arts began with his association the Montrose Arts Festival. In Inverness he became a Governor of the town's Eden Court Theatre, and served for a period as chairman of the Friends of Eden Court. He also played a leading part in trying to revive the Highland Club.

Sheriff Scott Robinson leaves his wife Helen (nee Hardi), three sons, Derek, Alastair, and Ian, and seven grandchildren.

At the funeral service in Inverness Crematorium, Ian Morrison, Dean of the Faculty of Solicitors of the Highlands, said: ''He was, and I know he would not mind me saying this, a lawyer's lawyer, a man with an inbred love of the law and fellow-feeling for all its practitioners''

''The advocate, inexperienced or otherwise, received from him only help and encouragement, never given in anger or with condescension and always consistent with the interest of justice.''

Mr Morrison described Sheriff Scott Robinson's hallmarks as a judge as ''integrity, dignity and compassion'', while as a person his attributes were ''unfailing courtesy, kindness, and his own brand of pawky humour''.