Robert Shepherd, MBE

Robert Shepherd of Cardenden, Fife, Scotland, has been awarded the Order of the British Empire (MBE) “for services to bagpipe music and teaching” in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Shepherd has been a leading figure in the pipe band world for almost forty years, and taught hundreds of students through Ballingry and Lochgelly schools in Fife. Through the school teaching program, the Dysart & Dundonald Pipe Band was supplied with young talent in the 1970s, as the band went from Grade 4 to two Grade 1 World Championship titles (1977, ’78) in fewer than six years.

Shepherd was Pipe Major of Dysart until the early 1980s, and since that time has centred attention on his bagpipe, chanter and reed making business, R.T. Shepherd & Son.

He has also been on the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s adjudicators panel for over two decades, calling many Major Championships along the way.

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