NOVELIST BARONET

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 131, 30 November 1926, Page 9

NOVELIST BARONET

LATE SIR G. MAKGILL

SCENES IN NEW ZEALAND,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 23rd October.

On 17th October tho death occurred, at 25, Tedworth square, of Sir George Makgill, the eleventh baronet, at the age of 57. In 18D1 he married Frances Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Alexander Innes Grant, of Merchiston, Otaga, and had two sons and two daughters. The elder son, John Donald Alexander Arthur, late Coldstream Guards, was born in 1899. Sir John Makgill, tenth Baronet, married Margaret Isabella, daughter of Mr. Eobert Haldane, of Cloanden, Perthshire, and half-sister of Lord Haldane. Mr. Eobert Haldane's first wife was Jane, daughter of John Makgill, of Kembaek and Fingask, de jure eighth baronet, and great-aunt of Sir George Makgill. Sir John Makgill assumed the title of baronet at heii male and representative of James, first Viscount of Oxfuird, who was created a baronet in 1627 with remainder to his heirs male whatsoever. Sir George, on the death of his father in 1906, recorded his pedigree at the Lyon Court, Edinburgh, and at Herald's College, | London. It was as a writer of articles and novels of adventure that he was best j known to the general public. He had [written, among other things, "Outside and Overseas," "Cross Trails," "Blackshaw," and "Felons," and he was the author of a number of magazine contributions, mainly on colonial life and interests. "Tho Times" recalls that in what is perhaps tho best of his novels, "Blackshaw," there is a vivid picture of a Scottish peer converted to v.n almost fanatical Methodism, handing over his property to a missionary society, and carrying off his five young children to Now Zealand, there to lead a simple, .Christian, patriarchal life. The scenes in New Zealand are picturosqne and written with vigour. Sir George will also be remembered for his association with the Anti-Gor-man Union during the war. In June, 1915, he raised the question whether Sir Ernest Cassel and Sir Edgar Spcyer, having been born out of the British Dominions and not of English parents, were capable of being members of the Privy Council. In the following December tho Court of King's Bench (the Lord Chief Justice and Justices Avory and Lush) delivered judgment directing the orders nisi obtained by Sir George Makgill to be discharged, on the ground that tho respondents, having been naturalised under the Act of 1870, wore capable of being Privy Councillors when they were respectively appointed.