Wilfrid Scott-Giles

Charles Wilfrid (or Wilfred) Scott-Giles^[1] (24 October 1893 – 1982) was an English writer on heraldry and an officer of arms, who served as Fitzalan Pursuivant Extraordinary.^[2]

Life

Charles Wilfrid Giles was born in Southampton on 24 October 1893, the son of Charles Giles, sometime Chairman of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.^[3] He was educated at Emanuel School in Battersea in London, and served in the First World War in the Royal Army Service Corps.^[3] Between 1919 and 1922 he read history at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.^[2] He then worked on the parliamentary staff of the Press Association before being appointed as secretary of the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers in 1928.^[4] In 1946 he became secretary of the Public Works and Municipal Services Congress and Exhibition Council.^[3]

In July 1928 he assumed the surname "Scott-Giles" by deed poll.^[5]

He became a leading authority on heraldry, and wrote a number of books and articles on the subject. He was credited by John Brooke-Little as initiator of the concept and name of The White Lion Society.^[6]

He also wrote the standard histories of his old school, Emanuel, and of his old college, Sidney Sussex.

Publications

His heraldic publications included:

• The Romance of Heraldry (1929)
• Civic Heraldry of England and Wales (1933, 2nd edition 1953)
• Shakespeare's Heraldry (1950)^[7]
• Boutell's Heraldry (2nd revised edition) (1954)
• The siege of Caerlaverock rendered into rime (1960)
• Heraldry in Westminster Abbey (1961)
• Motley Heraldry (1962)
• Looking at Heraldry (1967)

Other works included:

• The History of Emanuel School (1935; later editions, revised and supplemented by other authors, 1948, 1966, 1977)
• Sidney Sussex College: a short history (1951; revised edition 1975)
• The Wimsey Family: A Fragmentary History Compiled from Correspondence With Dorothy L. Sayers (Gollancz, 1977). In another association with Sayers, Scott-Giles prepared the diagrams and maps illustrating Sayers' translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.^[8]

Honours and appointments

Scott-Giles was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1953, and in 1957 became Fitzalan Pursuivant of Arms Extraordinary.^[9] In 1970 he was awarded the Julian Bickersteth Memorial Medal by the trustees and council of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies.^[10]

Following his retirement he settled in Cambridge, where he was made a Fellow-Commoner of his old college, Sidney Sussex.^[2]

Arms

Coat of arms of Wilfrid Scott-Giles

Adopted 1936 Crest On a torse argent & gules issuing from a circular chain square-linked or a demi-swan rousant the head lowered proper. Escutcheon Ermine, a cross double parted & fretted gules interlaced with an annulet or. [11] Motto Strive and Thrive