Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham

A larger-than-life character, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham was also a man of several political firsts including becoming the first president of the Scottish National Party.

Born in London, with a mixed Spanish and Scottish aristocratic background. ‘Don Roberto’ as he was later sometimes known, travelled to South America at the age of 17 to live as a gaucho, a nomadic horseman employed to herd cattle.

A time of adventure, it was also one of awakening social consciousness for the teenage Cunninghame Graham as he witnessed the cruel treatment of ordinary people by those in power. On moving to Paris when he was 26, he married a similarly adventurous spirit and the couple moved to Texas to run a cattle ranch, only to be driven away three years later by Native Americans.

Despite this, he was strongly opposed to the violence settlers were using against Native Americans and the biased way this was reported in the press. Returning to Britain, Cunningham Graham went into politics as a Liberal MP for North West Lanarkshire before leaving to better pursue his left-wing views as one of the founders of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888.

‘Don Roberto’ published his first book, 'Notes on the District of Menteith', in 1895. For the next 40 years he would produce a book a year, becoming friends along the way with leading writers such as Joseph Conrad and Oscar Wilde.

His best-known Scottish story is 'Beattock for Moffat' which describes an elderly exile’s failed attempt to return home to die. Cunninghame Graham himself died far from home in Buenos Aires but, after lying in state, his body was returned to Scotland for burial in the ruins of Inchmahome Priory beside his aristocratic ancestors and his wife, whose grave he had dug 34 years earlier.