George Alexander Eugene Douglas, the second Earl Haig of Bemersyde, known to his friends as Dawyck after his courtesy title, was the only son of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, first Earl of Bemersyde.
Dawyck Haig was born in 1918 at a time when his father, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, was at the height of his power and reputation. Educated at Stowe and Christ Church Oxford before being commissioned into the Royal Scots Greys, Dawyck Haig was captured in North Africa and imprisoned in Colditz. It was whilst a prisoner of war that he took up painting. Dawyck Haig was one of the last survivors of the ‘VIP’ prisoners held at Coditz, who included Winston Churchill's nephew Giles Romilly and Viscount Lascelles, nephew of King George VI.
After the war he became an artist of considerable repute - see the leaflet for the ‘Haig at Ninety’ exhibition at http://www.galleries.co.uk/pr/s4-08-SCOTTISH-pr1.pdf, which highlights his contribution to the flowering of Scottish artistic talent over the past fifty years - a skill which he had to combine with running the family’s Bemersyde Estate and carrying out those many duties which fell to him as a result of being his father’s son. These have included his tireless charitable work on behalf of the Royal British Legion, as well as wildlife conservation programmes such as that on Bemersyde Moss in conjunction with the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
Dawyck Haig also enriched the nation’s historiographical sources by facilitating the publication of excerpts from his father’s Papers and Diaries, as well as depositing all of the originals in Scottish archives accessible to the public and personally maintaining an open door policy to his father’s biographers - whether they were 'for' or 'against' - over the decades. He also wrote and published a memoir entitled ‘My Father’s Son.’ Throughout his life, Dawyck Haig honoured his father's name and when necessary defended his reputation as C-in-C of the BEF with great dignity.
The death of this fine gentleman truly marks the passing of an era and the loss to historians of a direct link to the past.
GAC
More information, photographs and anecdotes on the Front Forum.
