The legal position was unclear, and it took three years before a ruling by the Court of Session, which held him to be intersex, finally led to the Home Secretary recognising his claim to the title.

[1] John, the new Lord Sempill and Baronet, was a land owner and soldier who had served with the Lovat Scouts and then the Black Watch in the South African War.

[5] The issue of Ewan's gender would later prove contentious; the birth registration recorded a female child, but Forbes later commented that this was "a ghastly mistake".

[9] In his book The Aul' Days, written many years later, Forbes recalled a hatred of being "made to dress up" for social engagements, and of going to great lengths to avoid them.

[8] Lord Sempill insisted on a "strict Scottish" upbringing for his children, which meant that he was taught to speak and write fluently in Doric as well as in European languages.

[10] Forbes refused to go away to a girls' school, which meant being educated at home;[5] at fifteen, he pressed to be allowed to go overseas to attend a pre-university course, and eventually settled on a co-educational institution in Dresden.

[7] After coming out as a debutante in London in the late 1920s,[5] Forbes studied in Dresden for a year, 1929–1930, before travelling through central Europe, visiting Prague and Vienna.

[6] The troupe was largely female, meaning that many male parts were expected to be danced by women, and Forbes embraced the opportunity to be in public in a kilt and jacket.

Forbes inherited an estate at Brux Castle, Aberdeenshire,[16] of about 1,300 acres (5.3 km2),[6] and enthusiastically took to the lifestyle of a laird, adopting a broad Doric accent and taking to wearing a masculine kilt.

[5] He avoided upper-class society, where female clothing would be expected, and the last time he publicly appeared in a dress was to escort his mother to a royal garden party in 1935.

[18] In addition to the normal work of a rural doctor, in 1946 Forbes was called upon to act as a medical officer for German prisoners of war who were held in the area, due to his command of the language.

[19] The Alford area was one of the largest medical practices in Great Britain, and in the winter months Forbes often had to travel through ten-foot snowdrifts in a converted Universal Carrier.

[5] These conditions were not entirely unfamiliar; a trip to see an uncle in St. Moritz at the age of thirteen had led to him taking up skiing and figure-skating and winning a number of bob sled races.

[16] To raise a large amount of money quickly, Forbes sold the practice in Alford and returned to the farm in 1952, running it directly as a going concern from then on.

[27] Professor Louis Gooren returned to his records of the case in 1999 and "concluded, with hindsight, that Forbes-Sempill was almost certainly a female-to-male transsexual";[28] the details that have since emerged of his treatment make it clear that he was a trans man.

[31] The ruling continued to be challenged by John Forbes-Sempill, who caused it to be referred to the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, as the person responsible for the Roll of the Baronetage.

[34] On taking up the baronetcy, Forbes dropped Sempill from his surname; this had been adopted by the family in the 1880s when it inherited the barony, and there was no reason to persist once the titles were separated.

[16] With the inheritance case settled, he left the public eye and returned to the life of a rural landowner, continuing to live in his house at Brux.