LACHLAN Gordon-Duff was a hard-working and much-liked character who enjoyed caricaturing his kind. Born into an old Banffshire Jacobite family - he traced his origins to Adam Duff of Clunybeg in 1590 - he was imbued by his mother, Lydia, in the notion of public service as an end in itself.
While his impeccable vowels enunciated an education gained at Eton and Sandhurst, he was never slow at employing the native Doric. However, challenged once during a council meeting that he was a landed Tory of the old school, he retorted: "Tory, yes. Landed, yes - if you count 13 acres as 'landed'."
His ability to think out of his conventional upbringing won him the political friendships he readily used when projects were being driven through - in education in Banffshire days, and as chairman of water with Grampian. His quarter-century of council service ended at the height of Margaret Thatcher's unpopularity in Scotland during a purge of Conservatives in the 1986 local elections. But his public mission continued, serving as deputy-lieutenant to two Banffshire lord lieutenants, his elder brother, Robin, and latterly one-time Banff County Council colleague James McPherson.
Young Lachlan's father was killed in action with the Gordon Highlanders in Flanders a month before his birth in 1914.
He grew up in Cornhill in Banffshire, always knowing Robin would inherit the lairdship of Drummuir and Park. Active in the TA from youth - he joined the 1st Bn Gordon Highlanders in Edinburgh in 1935 - he served in Gibraltar and Singapore before being transferred to Orkney as adjutant of the newly formed 7th Gordons after the outbreak of the Second World War. The 7th Gordons were later included in the Highland Division re-formed after losses at St Valery in 1940. As company commander he saw action in Libya, Tripoli, North Africa and Sicily, and was second-in-command at Lubeck. After leaving the Army in 1947, he combined farming in Argyll with service in the TA, rising to colonel and commanding the 8th Bn Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders for eight years from 1951.
Following divorce from his first wife, he returned to his Banffshire roots in 1960, living and farming at Park House.
After the death of his second wife, he left Banffshire to live with his old friend, Bee Dufort, in Langley, Cheshire, devoting his time to researching the life of the soldier father he never knew.
In 1997, aged 82, he published With The Gordon Highlanders To The BoerWar And Beyond, an immediate bestseller chronicling his father's exploits.
Col Lachlan Cecil Gordon-Duff TD DL JP; born November 23, 1914, died January 6, 2005.
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