Sir Edward Hunter-Blair, 8th Baronet

Sir Edward Thomas Hunter Blair, 8th Baronet, (15 December 1920 – 21 October 2006) was a British landowner and forester. He was the son of Sir James Hunter Blair, 7th Baronet and Jean Galloway McIntyre, and was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford.

Career

He served in World War II for 8 months with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (joined January 1941 - discharged September 1941). He was Civil Servant, 1941–1943; journalist (assistant Foreign Editor) 1944-1949; member of Kirkcudbrightshire county council from 1970–1971; member of the Council of the Wyndham Trust, 1992–1996; member of the Scottish Association for Public Transport from 1993 and president, Dumfries and Galloway Mountaineering Club. He published an autobiography Our Troubled Future in 1993. He succeeded to the baronetcy (created in 1786), on the death of his father in 1985.

He married firstly Norma, daughter of Walter Sidney Harris, a master baker, in 1956 and they adopted a son, Alan, and a daughter, Helen. He later married Janet Clemency Wilson Reid of Robertland, daughter of David Wilson Reid, Baron of Robertland and archivist of Glasgow University, and his wife Diana Rosamond Angell, secretary of the Baronetage of Scotland.

The baronetcy devolved upon his kinsman, Patrick David Hunter Blair, born in 1958. This was because his only son, Alan Hunter Blair was adopted and consequently denied the baronetcy.

Blair's funeral took place at Straiton Parish Church, 27 October 2006.