Tributes paid to businessman Angus Graham who funded Strathblane's £1million library

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Angus Graham, the businessman and philanthropist who majority-funded a new £1m community library in the Stirlingshire village of Strathblane, has died at the age of 86.He had been ill for some months but was able last April to open the new library, named after his great-great-uncle Professor Thomas Graham, the father of chemical dialysis.His son, Major General Simon Graham, who has just retired as head of British Army Reserves, said his father had passed away peacefully at home on November 2 - but to the end had remained as ‘sharp as a pin’, keenly interested as much in world news as events in his beloved village.Although born in London, Mr Graham was a descendent of the Grahams of Ballewan, a farming estate west of Blanefield, which had been acquired by Professor Graham’s father in 1835.Angus Graham trained as a chartered accountant and worked for a number of companies in several parts of the world including France and the US.In 1977 he and his family moved to Scotland and he became a director of the Airdrie-based spirits group Inver House Distillers, which then employed 1200 people.

It was owned by the US-based Publicker Liquor Industries but in 1988 Angus Graham and three fellow-directors led an £8.8m buyout of the company.

Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area. Over the next 12 years the management team rebuilt it as a single malt producer and acquired five malt distilleries: Knockdhu, Speyburn, Pulteney, Balblair and Balmenach as well as the Catto’s and Hankey Bannister brands.

In 2001 they sold the company to the Thailand-based Pacific Spirits Group.Angus Graham had always wanted to do ‘something special’ for Strathblane and in 2019 he approached the local Community Development Trust offering to