Alastair Livingstone

The somewhat weathered Bachuil is the symbol of authority of St Moluag and in each generation is passed on to a designated successor, or coarb. St Moluag's Bachuil Mor is treated with veneration, for, like the rod of St Patrick of Armagh, the Bachull Isu, the staff of Moluag is said to possess miraculous powers.

A recent outing for the ancient artefact was in 2006 when Niall Livingstone, Younger of Bachuil, bore it in formal procession at the opening by the Princess Royal of an international heraldic congress in St Andrews.

Livingstone, a life-long kilt-wearer, was seriously passionate about his clan, and the Bachuil locale of Lismore. With his wife, Valerie, he welcomed clansfolk to their island home, and after his small clan was given recognition by the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs, he ensured through the activities of his elder son and heir, Niall, Younger of Bachuil, that his clan gained growing recognition of its Argyllshire roots. The Bachuil and his wider family in distinctive red and green tartan were a staple of the Argyllshire Gathering for years.

An ardent Jacobite, Livingstone was chairman of the 1745 Association for a decade, and was one of the three editors of the scholarly Muster Roll of the 1745 (1984, and now re-published as No Quarter Given). In his younger years, he played an active role as a member of the Convention of the Baronage of Scotland.

On retirement on Lismore he became active in community affairs as chairman of the island community council and, in the 1970s, led a vociferous local campaign for a car ferry operating from Port Appin to the north end of the island. For a decade he was local registrar as well as being an active kirk elder for more than half a century.

William Jervis Alastair Livingstone of Bachuil was born in Blantyre, close to Magomero in Nyasaland, where his father, William, had taken on the management of an estate at the request of his kinswoman, Agnes Livingstone, daughter of missionary explorer David Livingstone. Alastair never knew his father. He was killed in a native uprising when Alastair was just three months old.

His mother, Kitty, brought her children, Alastair and Nyasa, home to Appin, where her son attended the village school before becoming a boarder at Loretto. He went on to graduate from Edinburgh University in 1937. After studying Arabic and criminal law at Clare College, Cambridge, he joined the Sudan Political Service as assistant district commissioner at Berber on the Nile.

On an early job to recce a route to Abu Hamid 100 miles north, he engaged so well with his three camel attendants, two personal servants and two local convicts that he rewarded them with a feast of roast sheep prepared Bedouin style - in which the eyes form a delicacy.

Commissioned into the West Yorkshire Regiment, part of the 9th Indian Infantry Brigade in the Indian 5th Infantry Division, he fought in Eritrea and Ethiopia during 1940 and 1941 before moving via Egypt and Cyprus to Iraq, to guard the oilfields of Kirkuk. In 1942 the division was heavily engaged in the western desert campaign and in the withdrawal to El Alamein.

By now a captain and brigade intelligence officer, Livingstone was seconded at the request of the Palestine Government to lead local administration in Nablus and Jenin in Northern Galilee. His diplomatic abilities were tested to the full here, maintaining good relations with both Lebanese and Syrian governments while also acting as local magistrate.

For the next 25 years until retirement in 1973 he worked with the Iraq Petroleum Company, initially taking charge of personnel in Mosul then Basra. Latterly he managed Arab affairs and concessions for the company, involved in handling political relations with a succession of Gulf states. To the end of his life he retained an active interest in Middle East affairs and was a member of the Council of Anglo-Arab British Understanding.

While on leave in London in 1952, he met Valerie Collins on a blind date and four weeks later they were engaged.

In 1997, at the age of 82, during re-slating of the family home at Bachuil, a converted church in the centre of Lismore, Alastair fell two storeys. He survived with a broken leg and dented pride, becoming founder member and life president of what he called the Lismore Flying Club, a pleasantly arcane body that grew to achieve an exclusive and worldwide membership. As he remarked after the accident: "It helps to have your own saint watching over you".

He died at home on Lismore and is survived by Valerie, his wife of 56 years; children Niall, Deirdre, Catriona, Morag and Sandy; and grandchildren.

His elder son, Niall, now inherits the Bachuil.