Tribute to 'true renaissance man'

The Rev William Storrar pays tribute to his friend Magnus Magnusson during his address at the broadcaster's funeral service.

The Mastermind presenter had an "insatiable thirst" for the past

When Magnus stood for rector at Edinburgh University in 1975, I was his campaign manager.

On the eve of poll I had the bright idea of getting Magnus to go round every room in the student halls of residence that had displayed one of his election posters in the window; to thank the students for their support and to ask them to encourage their friends to vote the next day.

Magnus, being a true gentleman, thought this was a very courteous thing to do and a pleasant departure from all the politics of the campaign.

I, being a calculating campaign manager, knew that this was worth a couple of hundred votes - the news would spread like wildfire round the breakfast tables of the student dining room the next morning: "'You'll never guess who walked into my room last night!"

Well, my ploy was working well until we reached one room just after 10pm.

Magnus knocked on the door, we walked into the room and he started his usual spiel: "Thank you for displaying my election poster. Would you kindly ask your friends to......"

Suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence.

It was the only time that Magnus Magnusson ever started but didn't finish

There, lying languidly on the bed before us was a very attractive student, wearing what Robert Burns would have described as a cutty sark, a very short night gown: "It was scanty and she was vauntie!"

The next thing I knew, I was being propelled out of the room by Magnus' strong right hand on my shoulder.

"I think we'll stop this now, Willie," he said in the corridor.

It was the only time that Magnus Magnusson ever started but didn't finish!

Magnus has not finished, even now.

What he started in his life will continue to bless all our lives for generations to come, down to his children's children and their children after them.

What Magnus started was an infectious curiosity about the world around him and a delight in telling us what he found.

Whether it was leading a crack team of investigative journalists on the Express or Scotsman, or filing a report for the pioneering Tonight programme on television, Magnus wanted to get to the heart of the matter and explain it to us in 2,000 words or less.

Telling stories

Whether it was standing in front of a television camera on location in the Bible lands, telling the archaeological story of ancient Israel, or more recently, sitting at a Milngavie café table in the shopping precinct, enchanting his fellow coffee drinkers with the adventures of Percy the one legged pigeon, Magnus loved to tell us a story.

Whether it was eloquently making the case for conserving the flowlands of Caithness or the sea eagles of Rum as chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage, or giving his inaugural speech as Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, proudly telling the story of how it gave everyone the chance to learn, Magnus conveyed his love of nature and of learning to us with his golden voice and lyrical words.

The broadcaster took an active role in his rector's campaign

Whether it was sitting in front of the Mastermind chair as the grand inquisitor, asking those impossible questions, or sitting in his study at home as the master storyteller, battering away with his journalist's two fingers on the keyboard, Magnus was driven by a passion to tell us what he had found out; not only in the history of civilizations around the globe but also in the lives of the less famous and no less interesting: everybody from Victorian lady travellers in Iceland to the fakers, forgers and phoneys of his latest book, published just a few months ago.

Indeed, he once likened his fascination with unravelling such mysteries to being on the trail of an obsession.

Magnus' obsession with story-telling, his "insatiable thirst for the gossip of the past", as he put it - should not surprise us.

He was born into it (as we have heard), as a native Icelander and brought up to it in his Edinburgh childhood home, as "night after night, his mother told him the stories enshrined in the great prose Sagas of the north".

Nurtured in these Icelandic tales at his mother's knee, Magnus' own love of learning and quest for knowledge blossomed as a schoolboy at Edinburgh Academy where he was a dux scholar, star sportsman and prize-winning ornithologist.

His commanding grasp of nature, history and humanity has enlightened and brightened all our lives

At Jesus College, Oxford, he turned his mother's Icelandic storytelling and the finest Scottish education into a brilliant student career in Old Norse literature that could easily have led on to a professorship and all the glittering prizes of the academic world.

He was, after all, to become a superb scholarly translator of the Sagas and modern Icelandic literature.

His own expert knowledge of ancient history and literature made him the natural presenter of the groundbreaking Chronicle television series on archaeology, as an intellectual peer alongside the professors he interviewed.

But we forget one crucial thing about Magnus if we wonder why he did not pursue an academic career.

The Sagas are about people, exceptional and ordinary, trustworthy and treacherous, brave and cowardly.

Magnus was fascinated by such characters and wanted to tell their story.

The Sagas are about such people setting out on dangerous journeys, seeking fame or fortune, land or love, fleeing capture or death.

Magnus adored such adventures and wanted to join them.

Mr Magnusson formerly presented the Tonight programme

The Sagas are about discovering new lands, sheltering from fierce weather, sailing wild seas, naming the mysterious creatures of the air and land and sea.

Magnus loved the natural world and was an acute observer of it.

No true son of Iceland, reared on such tales, could be satisfied with a doctoral thesis on Old Icelandic grammar - not when you could work for the Scottish Daily Express and marry its star writer, Mamie Baird!

I think Magnus was drawn to a career in journalism and broadcasting because it allowed him to set out daily on his own quest for the Saga-like rogues and heroes, swindlers and saints of his own day - and to tell their story in his own inimitable style: with clarity and conciseness, with dry wit and child-like wonder, with easy erudition and humane wisdom - and not a split infinitive in sight!

And so today we give thanks for Magnus our friend, one of the great storytellers of our time, rooted in ancestral sagas and towering in his ability to share his own fascination with the world around him, through lucid prose and spellbinding broadcasting.

Magnus was a true renaissance man, whose commanding grasp of nature, history and humanity has enlightened and brightened all our lives.

Magnus was a very private man, secure in the love of his beloved wife and family, happiest when surrounded by them and absorbed in research within his study.

Restless imagination

It was there that he wrote his many best-selling, hugely popular but always scholarly books: on archaeology and the Vikings, on Iceland and the Sagas, on Scotland and its history, on anything and everything that caught his restless imagination and called for his investigative powers.

And yet from that castle of the heart and mind at his home, Magnus set forth time without number as a public man to promote the interests of Scotland, Iceland and Britain: as steward of the natural environment, guardian of our culture, and champion of higher education.

The roll call of his public service is quite exceptional: Rector of the University of Edinburgh; chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland; chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage; President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University and prominent supporter of so many other noble causes from youth theatre to music in hospitals and preserving old churches.

Above all, for many of us here and for countless millions in this country and around the world, Magnus was the exemplar of the founding virtues of the BBC as a great national institution - he showed us all that public broadcasting can educate, inform and entertain in the one programme and the one presenter, with a national audience so large that today's celebrities couldn't count it, never mind win it.

In recognition of such public-spirited service, Magnus received many academic and public honours, including knighthoods from his native Iceland and adopted United Kingdom that rightly brought him great satisfaction as a patriotic Icelander and loyal adopted son of Scotland.

Magnus had such an innate sense of dignity that it touched everyone he met and everything he did

But in the end, and at the end, Magnus told us the greatest story of his accomplished and distinguished career: the story of his own character.

Afflicted by ill health in these last months, it was the inner strength and dignity and integrity of the man as he faced such adversity that became the greatest Saga he ever told.

He told it with his characteristic modesty, honesty and good humour.

As his body failed, his kindness as a gentle man became all the more radiant; his gift for friendship became all the more generous.

Magnus had such an innate sense of dignity that it touched everyone he met and everything he did.

He treated everyone with the same respect and warmth: whether you were a university cleaner or the Duke of Edinburgh, a taxi driver or the Secretary of State for Scotland, a failed student or a famous celebrity - I give these examples because I have witnessed them all at first hand.

Reading people's comments on the internet in the hours and days after his death, what struck me most were the tributes from former colleagues who had worked with him and unknown strangers who had met him by chance - all reporting his unfailing words of encouragement and courtesy.

No saint

So many of us here could tell the same story of Magnus.

As he grew weaker, his wonder and delight at simply being alive in this world grew ever stronger.

What moved me most among the internet tributes were those from adults who testified that it was a children's TV programme or a book by Magnus which inspired their love of mythical stories or their studies in Icelandic literature or their career in archaeology.

So many of us here could tell the same story of Magnus.

As he drew nearer to death, Magnus's lifelong love for his wife and children, his family and friends, found its truest and purest and most beautiful expression.

In so many ways work seemed to be Magnus' life, his consuming passion and even, at times, his obsession.

He was not a saint.

He was a journeyman journalist with a Herculean capacity for hard work, a perfectionist satisfied with nothing less than excellence in everything he did.

He told the rudest jokes and told them badly!

His broadcasting career thrust him into the spotlight of fame like the new island off Iceland that suddenly rose out of the seabed, spewing out sparks and flame and smoke from that smelly, volcanic pipe of his!

Mr Magnusson loved the natural world and was an "acute observer"

Such people are not always easy to live with (as Jon suggested, Sally should have called her book about her journey round Iceland with her father, Travels with a Crabbit So & So!)

He never took holidays and was always researching and writing his next book.

But when the work had to stop, as it did in recent months, something extraordinary was revealed.

Work was not the core of Magnus' being after all.

Love for his loved ones lay at the heart of his life and brought him his greatest joy.

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away....faith, hope, love abideth; but the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13).

Only his family can tell that private story of Magnus.

But we, his friends, can give thanks for his wife and family, his greatest achievement and blessing and most wondrous legacy to us all.

Radiant smile

I was privileged to know Magnus and to be his friend for over 30 years.

I saw him in many moods and seasons, and witnessed some of the many triumphs of his professional and public career.

But I never saw a prouder, more radiant smile on his face than when he was delighting in the company and accomplishments of his own children and their own beloved partners and children.

Mamie is to Magnus what Beatrice was to Dante, only Magnus had the good sense to wed his Beatrice!

His marriage to Mamie was the best and wisest and happiest thing he ever did in his noble and distinguished life.

Thank you for sharing him with us, Mamie.

The family said it all for us, gathered here and around the world today as his friends.

Magnus taught us how to live and how to die, and to do both with infinite grace.

Thanks be to God.