GEORGE Iain Murray, who refuses to use the name George and is the 10th Duke of Atholl, lives in Blair Castle, Perthshire. The castle has white-painted pebble dash on it and was started in 1269. ‘The Earl of Atholl owned the land then. He was on a crusade when a local gentleman called Mr Cumming decided this was a nice place to build a house and started doing so,’ says the Duke. ‘The Earl returned and was somewhat annoyed to find a house in the middle of his grounds. So he turfed Mr Cumming out and took over.’ The Duke, whose father was killed in action in 1945, was evacuated to Blair Atholl during the war. (Before then, the castle was let to an American married to a Dutch diamond millionaire. ‘They used to play bicycle polo in the ballroom. When they left, they gave a new floor.’) He came to the title aged 26, through a third cousin three times removed. He doesn’t have a son and heir.

He is the only man in Britain permitted to have a private army, an honour awarded by Queen Victoria after she stayed in Blair Atholl in 1844. His army has never been to war, it is purely ceremonial and soldiers are drawn from his estate.

The Duke, who is vice-president of the National Trust for Scotland, recently retired as chairman of Westminster Press and now comes rarely to London. He wanders round his 135,000-acre estate with a Purdey 12-bore side-by-side shotgun and Ben the black labrador. He’s wearing brown brogues, tweed jacket and a ‘genuine’ Fair Isle sweater. He has a good head of hair and significant nose.

Tomorrow is the 12th when grouse shooting starts. ‘The Glorious 12th is not going to be glorious,’ he says, crossly. ‘In fact, nothing is going to happen.’ The grouse were killed by bad weather in May and he doesn’t intend to shoot them until Glorious September. In 1977, they had their ‘best year’ and shot 400 brace.

The castle has 120 rooms. ‘Mostly attics, five flats and archives for family papers.’ Since 1269, the castle, which was the last building in Britain to be besieged, has been altered every century. His changes have been ‘insignificant and cosmetic. Last year I rewired’. He hasn’t touched the main castle, 32 rooms of which are open to the public.

He lives in 20 rooms which were originally butlers’ and dairy maids’ houses. ‘It’s known as the South End and was added in 1750.’ His drive and entrance are well hidden from the 165,000 annual visitors to the castle. (He says he wouldn’t ever serve teas to Americans. ‘Not if I can help it.’) HE moved to this end of the castle in 1946 with his mother and lived there in discomfort. ‘The sitting-room fire smoked like mad, so if the wind was in the south-east you had to do everything in the bathroom, including a lot of paperwork. It was the only warm room in the house.’ They then made their own electricity. ‘It wasn’t a great success. We weren’t ever able to make enough to run more than one bar of an electric fire.’

The Duke’s home has Murray tartan carpets in the corridors. Downstairs are the gun room and reception rooms. He breakfasts on fishcakes or kippers in the powder-blue Adam-style dining room. He also eats lots of game off the estate. He changes, often into black tie, even when dining alone. He rarely wears a kilt. ‘It makes one look too much like a Scottish nationalist.’ He is immensely rich, despite the cushion in his creamy peppermint-coloured sitting room which reads: ‘To be rich is no longer a sin, it’s a miracle.’ ‘I’m rich in assets but poor in cash,’ says the Duke, whose only addition to the family collection in six years has been a silver cream jug. All the good 18th century cabinet-makers are represented in his furniture. His favourite treasure is a Zoffany painting of the third Duke and family.

Upstairs is the Long Corridor, 70 yards long and with walls covered in deer antlers. ‘That was how originally you got to your bedroom from the main part of the castle. According to my mother, if you were in the dining room and forgot your handkerchief in 1933, it was a five-minute trek to get it from your bedroom.’

Off the Long Corridor are the bedrooms, ‘grander than the reception rooms’, with their four-posters. ‘The beds have been here since 1750. They’re pretty comfortable.’ The Duke of Kent and Prince Philip have both slept here. He takes his jacket off to sit on the bed. ‘I expect I’ll die of cold, even in August.’

The bedrooms are numbered, not named. ‘This is ‘Second Best Guest’,’ he says, pointing to number eight with its double bed. ‘It’s all right if you have a couple staying, but if you have one person it’s unnecessarily large from the sheets point of view.’

The bed head in room 10, the eighth Duke’s bedroom, is decorated with a savage. It is his coat of arms. ‘It’s a wild man with a key in one hand and a dagger in the other.’ His motto is ‘Furth Fortune and Fill the Fetters’, which urges him to go forth and capture his enemies and shackle them. ‘Unlike most mottoes, it’s not a very good one.’

If he had to be confined to one room, which would he choose? ‘I think one’s bedroom is the most important room. One needs a comfortable bed.’ He has a single bed, presumably to be economical with sheets.

Finally there is the attic room. It is extremely cold in the winter, since it has four outside walls ‘and it was too expensive to bring central heating up here’. Luckily, the bath tub is in the bedroom itself. The Duke, who is 6ft 3in, has to sit with his knees up in his bath.