An Aberdeen academic awarded the highest honour of chivalry in Scotland has died at the age of 76.
Stewart Sutherland, who became Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, was born in Aberdeen in 1941.
Despite humble beginnings, the bright youngster would go on to have a great academic career being appointed as the principal of two universities, gaining a seat in the House of Lords and being named one of Scotland’s 16 Knights of the Thistle.
Brought up in a council house in Woodside’s Hilton Drive by his drapery salesman father George and his wife Ethel, Lord Sutherland first attended Woodside Primary before enrolling as a student at Robert Gordon’s College.
After school, he graduated from Aberdeen University with a first-class MA in philosophy under the guidance of theologian Donald Mackenzie MacKinnon.
When Mr MacKinnon was appointed to the Norris-Hulme Chair of Divinity in Cambridge, Lord Sutherland followed, gaining another MA in philosophy of religion from Corpus Christi College.
Initially considering a career in the ministry, he moved straight into academia with teaching roles in philosophy at Bangor and Stirling universities.
In 1977 he began teaching at King’s College, London, and was subsequently appointed vice-principal and principal in the years following.
Lord Sutherland’s career continued to progress and in 1990 he held the post of vice-chancellor at London University.
Two years later he became the first head of school regulator Ofsted.
In 1994, Mr Sutherland returned to Scotland to work at Edinburgh University and through recognition of his work he was knighted the following year.
During his time in Edinburgh, he balanced the university’s books and proposed grand plans to change the organisation’s entire structure in order to further stabilise its financial position.
In 2001 he was made a life peer, and took the title Lord Sutherland of Houndwood after the village where his family lived in the Borders.
He remained at the university until 2002 – the same year he was named one of the 16 Scottish Knights of the Thistle.
From that point, Lord Sutherland was a regular crossbencher at the House of Commons, with his speeches gaining respect from both sides of the chamber.
Lord Sutherland’s academic career was just one aspect of his storied portfolio.
He received a total of 10 honorary degrees from universities in Europe and North America, was a Fellow of the British Academy, and president of the Saltire Society, Alzheimer Scotland and the Christian Education Movement.
Lord Sutherland was a keen jazz enthusiast and hillwalker, and would regularly return to the Cairngorms where he had been a deerstalker as a student.
He also collected medallions, known as Tassies, made by the 18th Century Glasgow artist James Tassie.
He is survived by his wife Sheena, whom he married in 1964, and their three children Fiona, Kirsty and Duncan.
