Iain Noble

Who was Iain Noble?

Sir Iain Andrew Noble, 3rd Baronet of Ardkinglas and Eilean Iarmain was a businessman, landowner on the Isle of Skye and a noted Scottish Gaelic language activist. He died at home on Skye on 25 December 2010.

Noble was born in Berlin in 1935 the son of a British diplomat and a Norwegian mother. He received his primary education in Shanghai, Argentina, and at Summer Fields, Oxford, before attending Eton and University College, Oxford. The Nobles have been landowners in Dunbartonshire and Argyllshire since the 15th century, often with careers in the military or in business, and Noble began his own career by establishing a merchant bank, Noble Grossart, in Edinburgh in 1969. When he was bought out, he used the proceeds to buy part of the MacDonald Estates on Skye, and subsequently developed many business interests on Skye and elsewhere, including Hotel Eilean Iarmain and the whisky company Pràban na Linne which produces a vatted malt whisky called Poit Dhubh