Obituary

Graeme Whittington, Emeritus Professor of Geography in the University of St Andrews, died on 29 April 2021, aged 89 (Figure 1). He made major contributions to the geography and history of Scotland’s landscapes and his research sought especially to integrate the sciences and the humanities in pursuit of an understanding of environmental history. He leaves a corpus of work of international standing that continues to provide a benchmark for high-quality fieldwork, laboratory analysis and interpretation.

Figure 1. Graeme Whittington, 2003.

Graeme Walter Whittington was born in Cranleigh, Surrey, on 25 July 1931. The son of a marine engineer and a professional seamstress, he was the youngest of four children and he often recalled a childhood spent roaming the Wealden countryside and collecting stamps – activities which imprinted on him a deep interest in landscape and geography. At the age of 10 he won a scholarship to the King Edward VI Grammar School in wartime Guildford. A wish to enter university, with a view to becoming a geography teacher, was delayed when National Service intervened. In 1950 he entered the Royal Air Force and worked in telecommunications, including a spell at the intelligence and code-breaking centre of Bletchley Park.

An interest in climatology encouraged him to apply for a geography degree course at Reading University, then under the headship of the climatologist, Austin Miller. His choice of a Scottish island for his undergraduate dissertation in regional geography was partly sentimental – his parents had briefly lived in and were married in Scotland; the Isle of Bute, with an area close to the required 50 square miles, served the purpose well. While there, he was introduced to excavation when lodging with Dorothy Marshall, a leading light of Scottish amateur archaeology.

Graeme graduated with BA Honours in 1956 and became a temporary geography teacher at two public schools close to his home, covering for reservists who had been called-up for duty during the Suez Crisis. The regimentation of this experience convinced him that he did not want to become a schoolteacher. A way forward, though without certainty as to outcome, was to pursue his interest, developed as an undergraduate, in historical geography. Consequently, he began a PhD at Reading in 1956 on the topic of strip lynchets, the early agricultural terraces characteristic of the chalk and limestone hillslopes of Britain. Using air photography, mapping, place-name research and excavation, he cycled the length and breadth of the country, staying in youth hostels. He completed his doctoral thesis in only two and a half years, while at the same time, as an RAF reservist, delivering extramural lectures in meteorology at Oxford University and at various air force camps around the country.

In 1959 Graeme was appointed to an Assistant Lectureship in Geography at the University of St Andrews. He stayed at St Andrews for the rest of his career, being promoted to Lecturer in 1963, Senior Lecturer in 1972, Reader in 1980 and Professor in 1995; after his retirement in 1996 he was appointed Emeritus Professor and continued to engage in research and other university activities. For eleven years (1983–1994) he served as Head of Geography and its successor, the Department of Geography and Geology. During this period, he had to contend with the oversight and preservation of Geography at St Andrews in face of frequent pressures from both within and without the discipline. This he achieved with patience, common sense, diplomatic skill and a strong belief in the power of unity; he won respect from colleagues for the integrity and fairness he exhibited in this role. A key strength as tutor, lecturer and colleague was his empathy with those of differing backgrounds, aptitudes and temperaments. Never competitive, nor overtly ambitious, it was only at the urgings of friends and colleagues that he applied for promotion, becoming Professor of Geography a year before his formal retirement.

For the first half of his career, much of Graeme’s research and publication mirrored his teaching in regional geography, especially of India, Pakistan and South Africa (though he only visited the last of these; Thomas & Whittington, 1969), historical geography (e.g. Whittington, 1964, 1967) and climatology (Preston-Whyte & Whittington, 1972). His interest in the historical geography of Scotland came to dominate this period and he produced influential papers on place-names (Whittington, 1977, 1991), urban development (Brooks & Whittington, 1977), and medieval field systems and agricultural history (Whittington, 1970, 1973, 1975).

By the late 1970s, Graeme felt that he was reaching an impasse with the availability of historical data pertinent to his interests, and decided that palynology (pollen analysis) would create fresh perspectives, though he continued to publish in other areas of geography (e.g. Whittington, 1991; Whittington & Gibson, 1986; Whittington & Whyte, 1983). His engagement with palynology proved to be what he considered to be the most rewarding stage of his research career. From 1977, he published around 80 papers, largely on Scottish topics. These employed the evidence of fossil pollen assemblages, combined with related indicators, to determine ecological and wider environmental history over a wide range of Quaternary timescales, focusing on vegetation history, environmental reconstructions and methodology, and involving collaboration with other palynologists, geomorphologists, archaeologists, geochemists and statisticians.

Highlights of his palynological research included a series of papers on Black Loch, Fife, probably the most intensively investigated lake, palaeoecologically, in Scotland (e.g. Edwards & Whittington, 1993, 2000; Whittington et al., 1991), grappling with difficult deposits that other palaeoecologists avoided (Edwards & Whittington, 1998; Whittington & Edwards, 1993, 1999) and disentangling the pollen-related, stratigraphic conundrum of Kilconquhar Loch – a medieval turbary akin to the Broads of East Anglia (Whittington & Edwards, 1995; Whittington & Jarvis, 1987). The quality of his microscopy, pollen taxonomy and associated contextual investigations were exceptional (Whittington, 1994; Whittington et al., 2001; Whittington & Edwards, 2000; Whittington & Gordon, 1987); he was bemused at the media attention arising from determinations of Cannabis pollen in sediments of the early historical period in eastern Scotland (Edwards & Whittington, 1990; Whittington & Edwards, 1989). He thoroughly enjoyed the outcome of arduous fieldwork in the Western and Northern Isles (Edwards et al., 2005a, 2005b; Hall et al., 2002; Ritchie et al., 2001; Whittington et al., 2003), and collaborated extensively with other Quaternary scientists on topics and time periods which for him were novel and challenging (e.g. Ballantyne & Whittington, 1987, 1999; Brazier et al., 1988; Hall et al., 1995; Whittington et al., 1998; Whittington & Hall, 2002). He was delighted when his last major multi-proxy paper was published, nearly twenty years after his formal retirement (Whittington et al., 2015).

His eyesight failed progressively over the last twenty years of his life, and this greatly inhibited his involvement in research. He fought to maintain his independence in the face of physical difficulties, while also valuing the support and assistance of friends and neighbours. Ultimately there was no practical alternative but to enter a care home where he was sustained by his great love of classical music, radio, talking books, and visits from friends. His understated demeanour belied strong views on politics, education and the way that people behaved towards each other. He celebrated a Golden Age of university life, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, when staff had more time to devote to their students, before successive research assessment exercises began to distort disciplines, and bureaucracy was not the suffocating colossus he considered it to have become. Graeme Whittington was an excellent teacher and research colleague, a man of high principles and great integrity. His superficial reserve belied an underlying warmth and openness; he was modest, encouraging, inquisitive, cultured and an intellectual, yet lacked conceit or pomposity – someone who quietly enriched lives.