Dollar, Clackmannanshire - Notable People

Notable People

• According to the Pictish Chronicle, Amlaíb Conung the first Norse king of Dublin was killed in a battle fought at Dollar around 874, when Constantine I was the king of Scotland.
• Robert Burns visited Dollar in 1787, staying on the Harviestoun estate. There he was inspired to write the song "The Banks of Devon"
• Dollar was the home town of Scottish sinologist James Legge, the translator of The Chinese Classics, who invited Wang Tao to live in Dollar from 1870-1872 where he wrote two travel notes: Wondering in the Rambling Park and Touring the Mountain in Dollar, later published in Jottings from Carefree Travel, the very first travel book about Europe by a Chinese scholar.
• Dollar Academy was founded in 1818 by a bequest from a Dollar native, Captain John McNabb, who had allegedly made his fortune in the slave trade. Amongst the many notable pupils at the Academy include James Dewar, the inventor of the vacuum flask, as were the grandsons of Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, second Presiding Officer (Speaker) of the Scottish Parliament, George Reid, BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston and political journalist for The Scotsman, the News of the World and The Spectator magazines, Fraser Nelson.
• Lavinia Malcolm, Provost of Dollar between 1913-1919, was both the first lady provost and first lady town councilor in Scotland (see ).
• The painter J. M. W. Turner visited Dollar and made sketches in the glen.
• In the late 1990s, Michael Kulas and Saul Davies, musicians in the English rock group James also resided and worked out of the old Tea House Cottage, now known as Brewlands, next to Castle Campbell.
• The Scottish author Iain Banks studied at the nearby University of Stirling and, in an interview for The South Bank Show in 1997, spoke about using the landscape above Dollar as inspiration for his novels (in particular A Song of Stone).
• The noted Esperantist William Auld, nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, lived in Dollar until his death in 2006.
• The biologist Alan Grafen.