THE ART OF DEFIANCE

St Andrews historical illustrator Jurek Putter’s late father helped Poland counter the threat of Nazi Germany’s Enigma machines years before Bletchley Park. met Jurek to find out more

When artist Jurek Putter decided to dedicate his professional life to a series of drawings depicting the history of his hometown St Andrews during the Middle Ages, he was driven by a desire to restore a nation’s lost heritage. For centuries, St Andrews was the principal city of a once independent nation exercising its power by being at the centre of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.

Pilgrims converged on the small Fife settlement – a place made holy by claiming to possess the remains of Saint Andrew the Apostle.

Many others came to take up scholarly pursuits at Scotland’s oldest university at a time when the east coast was closely linked to the trading ports of Europe.

Yet most of the drawings, illustrations and paintings that provided a visual record of Scotland and her people – prior to the 16th

Century – were largely stolen, destroyed or sent abroad amid the upheaval of Scotland’s Protestant Reformation.

Jurek’s fascination with history was at least in part inspired by growing up in post-war St Andrews.

Born in Edinburgh in 1944, however, his life was also shaped by overseas forces.

When Panzer divisions of the German Army blitzkrieged Poland on September 1 1939, igniting the Second World War, Jurek’s father – a diplomatic courier also called Jurek (originally Jerzy Augustyn) – was among thousands of Polish troops who fled to France then to sanctuary in England.

Regrouped and re-equipped on the east coast of Scotland to initially build a long chain of coastal defences against imminent invasion, Jurek’s father was based at the Ardgowan Hotel in St Andrews.

The Polish soldier, who also worked for a spell as a senior administrator at Taymouth Castle military hospital at Kenmore, married Fife girl Georgina Rader, with Jurek their resulting son.

After the war, along with 90,000 of his fellow countrymen, Jerzy decided to settle in Scotland.

Like many of his compatriots who fought for a free and independent Poland, he risked arrest if he returned to his Soviet-occupied homeland, and changed his name to Putter. The family settled in St Andrews in 1946.

Growing up amid the eclectic nature of the university town, there’s no doubt Jurek was influenced by his father who viewed Scottish history, culture and its people from the perspective of an outsider. Fascinated by politics, divisions and frontiers – including

DRAWING ON HISTORY: Jurek Putter working in his studio at home in St Andrews.