Hugh Patrick Matheson (born 16 April 1949) at Ormiston near Hawick, Scotland is a retired British landowner, journalist, and (in his youth) international rower who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics, in the 1976 Summer Olympics, and in the 1980 Summer Olympics.
He is the great grandson of Hugh Matheson (industrialist). He graduated with a BSc (Econ) from Queen Mary University of London and MA in agricultural economics from University of Leeds.
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Early life
He grew up on a windy hillside near Hawick in the Scottish Borders. His formative experience was to find himself in Prague on the night of 20th August 1968, when the combined armies of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the ‘Prague Spring’ of measured resistance to the colonial powers, then exercised over it by the Soviet Union. He and a friend joined a group of students, led by Olda Černý, who began to produce a mimeographed, ad hoc, daily newssheet called ‘Student’, which aimed to correct the official publication of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudé Právo, and to inform the public in the Czech capital of the gradual extinction of the passive resistance movement.