He served in the Highland Light Infantry in India, Burma and Singapore and was then a major in Lord Louis Mountbatten's headquarters in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Journalist Andrew Marr has called him "a stern-faced and authoritarian Presbyterian conservative who ran the country like a personal fiefdom for Harold Wilson".

Ross coined the term "Tartan Tories" to describe the members of the Scottish National Party, whom he very much disliked; he was himself nicknamed "the hammer of the Nats" for his many attacks on them.

[3] Ross was occasionally depicted by newspaper cartoonists as a boy in dungarees seated on an upturned bucket, as a reference to the Scottish cartoon character Oor Wullie.

He was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1978 to 1980, and became Honorary President of the Scottish Football Association in 1978.