The Patriotic Duke

By Mark Peel

Heir to the premier dukedom in Scotland, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton enjoyed a gilded youth, his privileged upbringing buttressed by solid achievement: Scottish Amateur Middleweight Boxing Champion, Squadron Leader of City of Glasgow Squadron, popular Unionist MP for East Renfrewshire and chief pilot on the first flight over Mount Everest, a feat which won him the Air Force Cross.

But then came the fateful night of 10 May 1941 when Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of Germany, landed in Scotland on a one-man peace mission and asked to see the Duke of Hamilton.

With the Churchill government unsure how to handle Hess’s arrival, very few of the actual facts were conveyed to the public, allowing rumour and innuendo to flourish. Soon the Duke was being implicated as a crypto-Fascist who had befriended Hess and helped arrange his flight.

Now with all the official files in the public domain and with the aid of the Duke’s own archive, Mark Peel explains how the case against him assumed momentum and why that case is completely unfounded.