IAN Hamilton, who for many years was one of Scotland’s most outspoken and colourful advocates, may not live to see his dream of an independent Scotland being realised. But, he believes, it will happen, no question. As he put it: “My generation took us as far as devolution. It’s your generation that will take us the next step.”

Mr Hamilton turned 90 yesterday in what was a low-key celebration- “I’m not one to mark birthdays” - at his home near Oban with his wife Jeannette and a few friends.

Long ago, of course, Paisley-born Mr Hamilton became something of a nationalist hero for his role in helping to liberate the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. He has often written about that event, which took place on Christmas Day, 1950, but now, at this distance of time, believes that the episode looms larger in other people’s lives than it does in his.

Nor is he minded to accept the descriptions of ‘icon’ and ‘legend’, words used by his long-time friend and colleague, Sheriff Kevin Drummond QC and posted on the Faculty of Advocates' website.

“That’s just nonsense,” he says when the tributes are brought up. Nor could he fathom why an interviewer should have travelled from Glasgow to see him.

“All I have been during my lifetime is myself. I truly don’t understand such things. I suppose an icon stands for something,” he adds. “But I’m just me, and I always have been. Is that so terribly unusual?”

Mr Drummond said he had formed the impression that his old friend was uncomfortable with the fact that his views had become mainstream. If we took this to refer to Mr Hamilton’s lifelong passion for an independent Scotland, was he disappointed?

“Not in the slightest," he said. "I’m very pleased. It’s nice to have lived so long to see what I dreamed of, from being a schoolboy onwards, becoming the accepted view.

“Somebody has got to be in at the beginning, and I was in at the beginning. Because I’ve lived so long, I’m in at what is very nearly the end of everything that was in my mind 65 and 70 years ago.

“It has to be remembered that in 1950, what we were seeking was devolution, not independence. It’s only events since then that have made independence necessary. Because who would want to follow [George] Osborne and [David] Cameron? We can’t. We have to go our own way.”

Nicola Sturgeon has now said that a second referendum could take place by 2021. “I don’t know how long [independence] will take,” Mr Hamilton said. “Five, 10, 15, maybe 20 years. But it’s no longer a tide. Tides go in and out. It’s now a river. When it will reach the sea is anybody’s guess. It will be within your lifetime,” [he indicates his guests from The Herald], “not in mine."

He was “not despondent” that last year’s referendum had rejected independence. “We need time to prepare ourselves properly to become an independent state, and that is what we are doing. There are a great many more factors to be considered as an independent state, so many things that it’s in Scotland’s and England’s interest to do in common.”

Does he ever think about his role in the headline-grabbing theft of the Stone of Destiny? He smiles. “Put it this way. It’s not as big a thing in my life as it seems to have been in other people’s. The reaction surprised me. I didn’t think it would last 65 years.

“It wasn’t very much, for Heaven’s sake: we just went down and jemmied a door. I was just one of the war-time generation that happened to survive [the war]. I don’t like being singled out. To jemmy open a door and steal a big stone was dead easy. The Abbey was empty. We played our luck, we pressed on regardless, but if you want to do anything in life, you have to play your luck.”