Beneath the devil and the deep blue sea
‘On wild nights, I would think of her looking blindly into the racing current’
IT’S a dreich October morning on the east coast of the island, the Hebridean sea temperature is 13˚C and a man of 60 clad in a wetsuit is cutting loose some female busts he’s tethered underwater for two years. They’re constellated in barnacles and covered in grape-like ascidians (sea squirts) and he grimaces with cold and triumph, for these mannequins are destined for his studio—meet Fergus, 6th Earl Granville, laird of North Uist, godson of The Queen, who’s rapidly becoming a sculptor of rising repute.
Since I first met him 30 years ago—a tousle-headed youth with a wolfish grin, power-smoking over a Diet Coke in the local
