The final programme in the archive series from 1999 begins with an amazing piece of oral history recorded by Billy of a pioneer of the early SNP Muriel Gibson. She vividly recalls the impression made by Don Roberto when she saw him lead the Bannockburn rally on horseback in the 1930's.

For having originally founded the Scottish Labour Party with Keir Hardie, he increasingly devoted the last sixteen years of his life to the cause of Scottish independence - he was president of the Scottish Home rule Association of the early 1920's, president of the National Party formed in 1928, and honorary president of the Scottish National Party, from its foundation in 1934.

A charismatic man all his life, he also drew in other notable figures to the cause. In the early 1920's he was introduced to Hugh MacDiarmid. Later, the father of the Scottish Literary Rennaissance confessed, "my decision to make the Scottish cause, cultural and political, my life work dates from that moment"

His polemical writing on Scotland is increasingly relevant, as the tension between nationalism and unionism in Scottish politics is still unresolved.
If ever a major Scottish figure deserved re-discovery it is surely the life and legend of Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham.

He died in Argentina in 1936, where he was given the equivalent of a state funeral. His body came home to Scotland to rest in his ancestral lands in Stirlingshire. The monument to him in Gartmore is inscribed with words which sum him up well: "He was a Master of Life, a King among Men.". Show less