Commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1939, he served in the Middle East and North Africa before being invalided to Syria after an Irish Guardsman accidentally shot him in the shoulder.

After leaving the services, he and fellow veteran and nobleman Earl Haig enrolled at the Camberwell School of Art.

Gordon settled at Ashampstead, Berkshire, far from his ancestral home at Haddo, allowing him to enjoy the company of artistic, rather than country, society.

However, he was best known for magazine and other pieces describing his experiences in the brothels of Knightsbridge and Beirut, an activity regarded by his wife with "tolerant amusement.

"[3] In 1950, Aberdeen married the ceramic sculptor Anne Barry, daughter of Black Watch Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Barry, MC, of Great Witchingham, Norfolk, sometime Deputy Military Secretary of the Eastern Army of India, and Lady Margaret, daughter of Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 6th Earl of Radnor.