Former secretary of state for Scotland, George Younger (Lord Prestwick), was a Scottish politician whose long and popular career as a Conservative MP for Ayr ensures he will be remembered long after his death on 26 January 2003, aged 71.

Known to many of his peers as Gentleman George and to others as Viscount Younger of Leckie, he was a central figure in Margaret Thatcher’s administrations, serving as both secretary of state for Scotland and defence secretary.

Outside of politics, he was also chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2001.

“The country has a lost a tremendous, loyal servant,” said former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith on his death, “and there will be a huge sadness in the Conservative Party.”

George Kenneth Hotson Younger was born on 22 September, 1931, in Stirling. The eldest son of the third Viscount Younger of Leckie, he attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford,

After National Service in Germany and Korea, where he served as a lieutenant with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, he joined the family brewery firm ‘Younger’s Ale’. There, he rose to become a senior sales manager, before going on to stand for parliament in 1959 at the tender age of 28.

His subsequent defeat did not deter him, however, and by 1964, he had taken the seat of Ayr. A year later, he was made Scottish whip and, come 1970, became a quietly effective under-secretary for development in the Scottish Office.

1974 saw him promoted to chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, while serving as deputy spokesman on defence in the Commons. Margaret Thatcher, who rose to Tory power a year later, named him a junior spokesman for Scotland in 1977.

When her initial favourite of Scottish Tory MP Teddy Taylor lost his seat later that year, it was rising star Younger whom Thatcher chose to become Scottish Secretary. Altogether, he would go on to run Scotland for nearly seven years, known to many as the ‘King of Scotland’ who managed to contend with industrial decline and growing unemployment.

Michael Hestletine’s resignation as secretary of state for defence in 1986 signalled yet another promotion for him, this time one which had been something of a boyhood dream. A strong supporter of the nuclear deterrent and Trident missile programme, he became a central voice in the Iran-Iraq war, as well as the American raid on Libya and Star Wars programme during the 1980s.

Later years saw him quit the cabinet to join the Royal Bank of Scotland as group chairman in 1989, helping to lead the company to record profits and a take over of NatWest. He stood down as Ayr MP in 1992 and, after a long battle with cancer, later died in retirement on 26 January 2003, at the age of 71.

He was made a life peer in 1992 as Baron Younger of Prestwick.

His great-grandfather had also been a Conservative MP and chief whip to Lloyd George’s coalition government, later helping to shatter that coalition by leading the 1922 Carlton Club Tory walkout.

Away from politics, he was a music lover and enjoyed playing tennis.

Of his 10-year chairmanship of the Royal Bank, chairman Sir George Mathewson once described it as: “the most successful decade in its history.”