'The somewhat surreal moment I received Scotland's highest honour'

The Scots who have been awarded the country’s highest honour have been named with a forensic anthropologist, Scotland’s first black professor and a distinguished ‘awyer now among the knights and the ladies of the Order of the Thistle.

Professor Dame Sue Black is no stranger to recognition for her often groundbreaking work as a forensic anthropologist but news of her latest honour caught her off guard.

She is one of three Scots selected by King Charles to join the Order of the Thistle, a chivalric order which is believed to have originated in the 1400s.

Professor Dame Sue Black is one of three new Ladies and Knights appointed by the King alongside human rights activist Sir Geoff Palmer and lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy.

Professor Dame Sue Black said receiving news of her appointment to the Order of the Thistle was 'somewhat surreal'. PIC: PA.

Meanwhile, the Duke of Edinburgh has been appointed to mark his 60 th birthday and joins three other members of the Royal Family who serve as an “extra” of the order.

Professor Black, who was born in Inverness, set up the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at Dundee University and pioneered new identification techniques to convict paedophiles, with her further research on biometrics taking herKosovo and Sierra Leone to assist in international war-crime investigations.

Awarded a life peerage in 2021, Professor Black, who is now president of St John’s College at Oxford University, described the news of her latest honour as “somewhat surreal”.

Sir Geoff Palmer

She said: “Contact from the Palace was so totally unexpected and somewhat surreal. I don’t think it has really sunk in fully and all I can promise to do is to serve as best I can.”

The Knights and Ladies of the Order are selected directly as a personal gift of the Sovereign to reflect those who have excelled in public and professional life – from law, to medicine, politics and business.

Sir Geoff Palmer is the Professor Emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University and a human rights campaigner who has done much to illuminate Edinburgh and Scotland’s links to slavery. His late mother’s grandfather, Henry Larmond, was a a slave owned by the Scottish governor of Jamaica, Earl Balcarres.

Baroness Helena Kennedy. PA: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

He said: “I accept the Award with great honour and humility, not only for myself but on behalf of the people who have supported my life, education and work from my birth in Jamaica in 1940.

“I thank the public for the positive responses to this announcement. They reflect the efforts being made to address racial injustice. To me, this Scottish Award states clearly that we are one humanity.”

Baroness Kennedy has been widely recognised for her work on women and the law and on widening participation in higher education. She has been honoured by the governments of France and Italy for her considerable work on women’s rights.

She is currently looking to introduce legislation against misogyny in Scotland.

King Charles III and The Princess Royal in the ceremonial dress of the Order of the Thistle leaving St Giles' Cathedral. PIC: PA/Jane Barlow.

The new knights and ladies will be officially sworn in at a ceremony at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh this summer.

The order is recognised by the ceremonial dress of a green velvet robe and black velvet hat topped with an ostrich feather.

The Order’s motto, Nemo me impune lacessit - ‘no one provokes me with impunity’ – is a former motto of the Stuart dynasty and is also used by the Royal Regiment of Scotland.