A respected archivist, antiquary, and scholar of English history, Hugh Murray Gladwin Baillie greatly expanded research on European court etiquette and the planning of baroque state apartments. His research on the British orders of knighthood is still regarded today as the foremost in its subject.

Born in 1916, Baillie won a scholarship to the University of Oxford at the young age of seventeen. Upon his graduation from Oxford, he began a promising career as a diplomatic services officer but was soon diverted by enlistment in the British army. His proficiency in French and German aptly suited him for service in the British Intelligence Corps as an interrogator. At war’s end, he was transferred to service as a Monuments officer for the North Rhine province, later Land North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany, eventually becoming the deputy chief of that regional, British MFAA operation. Baillie later served as a MFAA officer stationed in Hamburg from August 1948 until 1950. He was able to apply his vast historical knowledge to the rescue and recovery of not only displaced art but the very same buildings about which he was so well versed. He supervised the interzonal transfer of artworks and artifacts from the American collecting points to the British Zone of Occupation from which they had been removed during the war. It is said that he saved the life of his German counterpart, Count Franz Wolff-Metternich, who had taken ill with pneumonia while being stranded without security clearance.

After returning home, Baillie joined the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts in 1955. As an assistant registrar and later as record keeper of the Manorial and Tithe Documents, he established himself as an authority on English historical records. His 1961 to 1965 research on the eighteenth-century orders of knighthood was sponsored by the Heraldry Society, while his landmark paper “Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces” (1967) was read before the Society of Antiquaries in London. His commanding knowledge of British orders and decorations also established him as a trusted source for the identification of painted portraits.

After decades of service at the Royal Commission including a promotion to assistant secretary in April 1965, Baillie retired in 1979. For his pioneering efforts in his fields of research, Baillie was appointed a Member of the British Empire (MBE) and elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London.

He died suddenly in London on March 16, 1982.