Who’s who among those honoured

THOSE awarded the Freedom of Aberdeen are also made honorary burgesses.

They include Prince Albert, the Prince Consort; prime ministers Sir Robert Peel, Sir Winston Churchill, and William Ewart Gladstone; the explorer Henry Morton Stanley; philanthropist Andrew Carnegie; Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, and Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts.

Other honorary burgesses in Aberdeen include Annie Pearson, the Viscountess Cowdray; Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe of Scapa; the Duke of Buccleuch, the Duke of Sutherland, the Earl of Rosebery, and John Boyd-Orr.

More recent honorary burgesses include Nelson Mandela, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and Scotland the What stars George Donald, William “Buff” Hardie and Stephen Robertson.

Members of the Grand Antiquary Society – one of the 17 burgess associations of Glasgow – include King Edward VIII, King George VI, The Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, the Princess Royal, Sir William Kerr Fraser, former chancellor of Glasgow University and his wife Lady Marion Fraser, a former high commissioner to the General Assembly.