‘A many-sided man’, Grant Duff was a cosmopolitan Liberal MP and writer with bright red hair and beard. He was described by a fellow MP as ‘an odd intellectual ferret’. First returned for Elgin Burghs in 1857, Grant Duff was well-travelled and well-read on European affairs and promoted meritocratic reforms of Oxford University and public schools. He sat in the Commons until 1881 when he was appointed governor of Madras by Gladstone.