Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton

Wing Commander Lord Malcolm Avondale Douglas-Hamilton, OBE, DFC (12 November 1909 – 21 July 1964) was a Scottish nobleman and politician.

Douglas-Hamilton was third son of the Alfred Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton, and Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton. He was educated at Eton College and at the RAF College Cranwell.

He married twice: firstly in 1931 to the Hon. Pamela Bowes-Lyon, a granddaughter of the 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne) and cousin to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. They had four children. His elder son, Alasdair, wrote a biography of his father, Lord of the Skies.

Following their divorce he was wed in 1953 to Natalie Scarritt née Wales (1909-2013), an American who had organised the Bundles for Britain campaign in World War II.

After his second marriage, he emigrated to the United States, where he became extremely active in fostering relations between Scotland and Americans of Scottish descent. He considered the United States to be his adopted country. He founded, along with his wife, the American Scottish Foundation, which after the Saint Andrews Society is the oldest American organization devoted to US/Scottish relations in existence. The organization was responsible for establishment of Scotland House, and the Scottish Ball, an annual charitable dinner devoted to raising money to support the American Scottish cause.

He served with the Royal Air Force from 1929 to 1932, then worked in civil aviation until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Recently disclosed documents from MI5 show, that, on 1 August 1936, Lord Malcolm flew a de Havilland plane to Spain, that he delivered to pro-Franco nationalists. Another plane was flown the next day by Dick Seaman.[1]. Only two weeks earlier, General Franco was flown in a de Havilland from the Canary Islands to Morocco and onwards to Spain, helped by two other Britons, Hugh Pollard and Cecil Bebb.

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