Researching Michael Scott

Michael Scott was the son of John Scott, 3rd Earl of Eldon, and the youngest of seven children. He attended Winchester College. He emigrated to Australia in about 1900 but returned to the United Kingdom between July 1906 and early 1907, missing the main Australian golf events of 1906. Scott won a number of important amateur tournaments in Australia, including four Australian Amateur titles (1905, 1907, 1909, and 1910), six Victorian Amateur Championship titles (all between 1904 and 1910), and several others. He won the inaugural Australian Open in 1904, and again in 1907. He returned to England in 1911.

Scott fought in World War I, and was decorated with the Order of Aviz of Portugal and the Order of the Black Star of France. In 1918, he was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

While he won the French Amateur in 1912 and 1922, Scott was not able to win in England itself, though he was a member of Great Britain's 1924 Walker Cup team. Finally, in 1933 when he was nearly 55 years old, he won The Amateur Championship by beating Thomas A. Bourn 4 & 3 at Hoylake. The following year, Scott played for and captained the 1934 Walker Cup team, setting the record for the oldest player in that event as well (which still stands). He later won a West of England Amateur title at the age of 57, and was the Captain at Royal St George's Golf Club.

Several of Scott's siblings were also golfers. The most famous was Lady Margaret Scott, a dominant player in early women's golf who won the first three British Ladies Championships from 1893 to 1895 before retiring from tournament play. Osmund Scott was the runner-up at the 1905 Amateur Championship, and Denys Scott also competed. Michael Scott was married three times, had at least one daughter, and died at the age of 80 in 1959.

Scott was born in Sussex on 30 July 1907 and educated at King's College, Taunton, Chichester Theological College and St Paul's College, Grahamstown. He was ordained by George Bell in 1932 and began his career with curacies in Slaugham and Kensington. He was Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of Bombay from 1935 to 1937; and then served at St Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta. In 1943 he moved to Johannesburg where he was Chaplain to the St Alban's Mission. While there he became the first white man to be jailed for resisting that country's racial laws. In 1952, he co-founded the Africa Bureau, "an organisation to advise and support Africans who wished to oppose by constitutional means political decisions affecting their lives and futures imposed by alien governments." He was a leading international promoter of Namibian independence along with Chief Hosea Kutako and Captain Hendrik Samuel Witbooi. For his efforts in the Namibian War of Independence, he has a prominent street named after him in Windhoek.

With Bertrand Russell, he was co-founder of the Committee of 100 in 1960. He met with Martin Luther King Jr. during Ghana's celebration of independence.He wrote his biography A Time to Speak, published by Faber and Faber in 1958 and in his later life was a friend of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He died on 14 September 1983. There is a memorial window to him at St Pancras, Kingston near Lewes.

In 2015 he was a foundation fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy; he was appointed a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2016. He was a National Teaching Fellow in 2017, and in 2017–2018 was a Leverhulme Research Fellow.

He is president of the Lytham Saint Annes branch of the Classical Association.