Born to the Grant's distillery family who created Glenfiddich whisky, he was one of Scotland's Great Officers of State for the last 12 years of his life.
A classical scholar and talented orator[1][2] who nonetheless lost his first two election campaigns, Grant sat in the House of Commons from 1955 to 1962.
[6][9][1] As an officer of the Territorial Army, he was mobilised at the outset of World War II,[4] and served in the Royal Artillery,[9] reaching the rank of major.
Returning to the bar after demobilisation in 1945, Grant rebuilt his legal practice, focusing on trusts, wills, inheritance and company law.
[9] At the 1951 general election, aided by the lack of a Liberal Party candidate, he reduced the majority of the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) and current Lord Advocate, John Wheatley, by nearly half.
At the general election in May 1955, Grant's oratory drew over a thousand people to his eve-of-poll rally on 25 May in Hillhead, with hundreds more turned away.
One of the cases which he declined to bring was a charge of obscenity against the publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover, following the unsuccessful prosecution in England.
[24] The Labour MP Emrys Hughes congratulated Grant for his "extreme common sense",[24] and a subsequent High Court challenge to his decision failed.
In Winnipeg in 1961, he opposed recent British moves to restrict capital punishment, describing them as mistaken and a threat to public safety.
[26] In 1962, Grant led the defence in the Scottish courts of a claim for about £60 million (£1.62 billion in 2025[27]) in damages by the Glasgow-based Burmah Oil Company against the government of the United Kingdom.
[10][28] During the Japanese conquest of Burma in 1941 and 1942, the company's assets in Rangoon had been destroyed under a "scorched earth" policy by retreating British forces.
[10][33] (In 1967, then Lord Advocate Gordon Stott was elevated to the judiciary, and later joked "I appointed myself, and a jolly good judge I turned out to be").
[34] However, after the office had been vacant for more than three months, the Labour MP James Hoy raised the issue at Prime Minister's Questions on 31 July, suggesting that the delay was due to government fears of losing a by-election.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan declined a challenge from opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell to explain the reasons for the delay, but promised that a new Justice Clerk would be in place before the Scottish courts resumed on 2 October.
[2] Lord Grant died on 19 November 1972 as a result of a road accident near Lynchat, about 3 miles north of Kingussie in Inverness-shire.
[3] The fatal accident inquiry in May 1973 heard that blood tests showed Lord Grant to have consumed the equivalent of two pints of beer or two large whiskies.