While he possessed a natural talent for impersonation or what he liked to call mimicry, the weight of history and family tradition was against him. His father, Dr John Glaister, ‘Old John’, as he would be called to differentiate him from his progeny of the same name, was a Glasgow general practitioner, destined to become Professor of Forensic Medicine at the city’s university. ‘Young John’ was born in May 1892, the final addition to the Glaisters’ family of two boys and four girls. His boyhood memories were of a Victorian father who he described as, ‘both a popular and kenspeckle figure’, the latter being a Scots word meaning ‘conspicuous’ and perhaps translated into the modern idiom as ‘high profile’. With his duties as a busy medical practitioner, making his calls in style using a horse-drawn carriage, and lecturing on public health and other matters at St Mungo’s College, ‘Old John’ often did not see his children for days on end.
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