FEATURE
ON Christmas Eve 1914 the troopship SS City of Benares set sail from Southampton to Le Havre. Embarking alongside the crowds of good-natured Tommies from London was a Church of Scotland minister, the Rev Lauchlan MacLean Watt (1867– 1957). He already enjoyed a considerable reputation as a preacher, lecturer, poet, novelist and literary critic – ‘words seem to come from him as if from a magician’ said one admiring (and possibly rather envious) clerical colleague – but it was the two books he wrote about his wartime experiences and his subsequent public addresses that would make him a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born in 1867, MacLean Watt was the only son of a Schools Inspector. His mother came from Skye and passed on to her son a lifelong passion for all things Celtic. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and ordained to the charge of Turriff in 1897, moving four years later to Alloa and, in 1901, to St Stephen’s, Edinburgh, a congregation which sent nearly 900 men on active service during the First World War. He was later called to Glasgow Cathedral and his career culminated in his appointment as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1933.