We do not believe that Ian had ever dreamed of working in Glasgow. That “dear green place” was, in the minds of most of the London establishment a dirty, dreary industrial town, peopled by savages. Many London consultants and academics in the 1950s shared the view expressed in the 1770s by Dr Samuel Johnson: “Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life”. Yet Glasgow University was founded in 1451 by Pope Nicolas V (who also founded the Vatican Library) and its constitution was based on that of the Pope's own University of Bologna, the oldest in the world. In Britain only Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews were its seniors. In the eighteenth century, Glasgow graduates William Smellie and William Hunter laid the foundations of rational and scientific obstetrics. In the nineteenth century, Glasgow Professor Joseph Lister had saved countless lives by his discovery of the antiseptic treatment of wounds; his successor Sir William Macewen had pioneered thoracic and brain surgery and Murdoch Cameron, Professor of Midwifery, demonstrated that caesarean section could save the lives of mothers and babies. It was a great tradition.

When the Glasgow vacancy occurred, it was suggested to Ian that he might consider applying and he agreed.