Correspondence and other papers of and about Dr Farquhar Macintosh, teacher and educationalist and supporter of Gaelic. He was born in Elgol, Isle of Skye, on 27 October 1923, a native speaker of Gaelic, and died in Edinburgh, 18 November 2007. He went to Edinburgh University and Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow, and became headmaster of Portree High School (1962-1966) and Oban High School (1967-1972), and finally Rector of the Royal High School, Edinburgh (1972 to 1989). He served on the boards of a number of educational bodies in Scotland, and from 1991 to 2007 was Chairman of the Trustees of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

The collection includes some correspondence, a small file of papers concerning his service in the Royal Navy, and papers and newspaper cuttings recording his own career or focused on his interests in educational and Highland- and Gaelic-related matters. Notebooks of lecture notes and teaching notes illustrate the teaching of history at Scottish universities and schools in the 1940s to 1960s.

Macintosh was a regular contributor to newspaper columns and letters pages. The collection also contains talks on education and education planning that he gave at conferences. A popular festive speaker, he preserved a sizeable number of mostly very humorous speeches given in English or Gaelic at a variety of occasions.

A number of notebooks on Gaelic language, literature and culture, some of them written entirely in Gaelic, bear witness to a serious engagement with Gaelic matters especially during his student days and early career. Some of them contain drafts of talks or newspaper contributions. They partly draw on Gaelic scholarly literature, but partly also on the knowledge he gained during his own childhood and youth in a Gaelic-speaking environment.