THE heavy door creaks open. The chief of the clan which has owned this property for hundreds of years invites me in. He is wearing a tie in the family's red and grey tartan, which matches the carpets throughout.

History pervades every room. Paintings of ancestors gaze down sternly from the walls. On the sideboard is a stuffed wildcat, its claws outstretched. This is the emblem of a family whose motto is: Touch not the ungloved cat.

"That's me," says Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, "so when I'm like that don't touch me."

This former High Court judge has needed his claws in the past year. Since his report into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence was published last February, he has faced criticism from across the political spectrum.

Although the Government has pushed through many of its proposals, the Metropolitan Police has blamed his definition of "institutional racism" for falling morale and rising crime. Commentators have attacked him for intellectual sloppiness, political correctness and even of having "blood on his hands" for scaring policemen off arresting black suspects.

"I'd retired after 30 years as a judge. I thought things had all gone rather well. I was ready for a quiet life, then this," he says. "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone."

One might have expected the man behind such a furore to be a fully signed-up member of Tony Blair's modern dynamic new Britain. But the 73-year-old clan chief is a high ranking officer in the forces of conservatism. A former member of the SAS, he is in favour of the Union and is pro-hunting. He does "nasty things" to fish and used to shoot.

One of the reasons he so resents the criticism he has received from The Daily Telegraph in particular is that he sees it as a natural ally. "You ask any of my friends whether I'm a politically correct person and you would get a very clear answer," he says. "But I was made aware during this inquiry of many things and the examination of racism and the evidence which we heard altered my perception of life."

One theory is that this self-confessed Establishment figure over-compensated for his background in writing his report. On the weekend before Sir William began his inquiry, stories were planted suggesting that he had a record of prejudice - they were a "travesty of the truth", he says, which did not affect his judgment. "Those who served with me in the SAS would not readily agree that I could be leant on by anybody."

Sir William insists that he stands by his report in full. Sir Paul Condon, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has blamed the 30 per cent rise in London street crime in part on the Macpherson report. Police officers say that they are wary of using their stop-and-search powers in case they are branded racists.

But Sir William is adamant that this should not be the case. "If stop-and-search has reduced and if crime has thereby increased that's the fault of the police, not of the inquiry," he says. "We specifically said that stop-and-search must not be abandoned or reduced. But we said we had been given very considerable evidence that there was discrimination."

He still thinks that there is a case in exceptional instances for scrapping the "double jeopardy" law - a central plank of the judicial system in this country - and allowing suspects to be retried. He also agrees that racism in the home should be outlawed - although he admits there might be practical difficulties in differentiating "dinner party chat" from "violent racist behaviour".

It was the Macpherson report's definition of "institutional racism" which prompted the most furious debate. Sir William thinks the phrase was entirely justified. "We believed that there was a collective responsibility, a collective failure. There were pockets of police officers who supported each other in their lack of ability to deal with a grieving black family."

But if racism is "unwitting" - another word used in the report - does that not remove responsibility from the person showing it? "It may be that the responsibility is on those who failed to train them as much as the individual officers themselves," he says.

Many of the officers involved in the case collapsed under the strain of cross-examination. Sir William admits that their interrogation was sometimes tougher than that of the Lawrence family's witnesses. "This was after all an investigation into the policing of the murder," he says.

But, he says, the inquiry actually rejected the Lawrences' bitterest allegations - that the police had refused first aid to their son because they did not want "black blood on their hands", that the investigation was delayed out of racism, and that the police officers had been corrupt.

"They put the case very high against the police but we didn't find any evidence."

Sir William says that he wrote much of the report himself in longhand. This accounts for the smattering of spelling and grammatical errors which have been used as evidence that the inquiry paid too little attention to detail.

"I cannot believe that they should be allowed to detract from the message of the inquiry," the author says.

More serious is the criticism that the inquiry made too many sweeping assumptions, such as that the attack on Stephen Lawrence was racially motivated. Sir William admits that he did assume this to be the case from the start. "The attackers used the words 'What nigger? What nigger?' and simply came and murdered this young man without any pretext whatsoever. How any one can say it was not a racist attack upon that evidence I fail to understand."

Does he think that the report has made a difference to the police? "I do suspect that [racism] does still exist. But everybody is conscious of the risk that it may be there and I'm quite sure that those in authority have the intention of eliminating it. It will take time."

Since writing the report, he says he has become increasingly aware of "institutional racism" in other walks of life. "Undoubtedly there are other organisations in Britain which suffer from the same complaint - for example the fire service, the Army. Probably the judiciary has to examine itself; so do magistrates. It is undoubtedly there too in Parliament, undoubtedly. It's a subject which I think many of us failed to appreciate, that there might be behaviour supported by a group of people within an organisation which was discriminatory - which the people involved hardly realised at the time."

If the judiciary is institutionally racist then is he, a retired judge, prejudiced himself? "I've looked back on myself and I think probably I undoubtedly have been in the past. I'm quite sure I have thought the wrong things even if I haven't said wrong things, particularly perhaps in stereotyping, looking at a young black man with a baseball cap the wrong way round and immediately thinking the worst against him. I would challenge most people to say that they haven't at some stage or another been guilty."

Does he think that the men in wigs are too out of touch with the real world?

"We were a bit bedevilled by some judges who made silly remarks like 'who are the Beatles?' - he knew perfectly well who they were - but who wants judges of 30 years old, wearing jeans?" He thinks that elected judges would be "appalling" and the Government's plan to set up a Criminal Defence Service could "erode the independence of each individual barrister".

This traditionalist who will not work again because he will be "senile by statute" next year admits it is odd that "the most extraordinary experience of my legal career came when I had retired".

When Lord Irvine telephoned him in his "Scottish lair" to ask him to head the Lawrence inquiry, friends urged him to turn it down. He remembers them saying it was "a hospital pass, a rugby football term for when you pass the ball to somebody who is immediately going to be knocked down".

But, in consultation with his wife, he decided it was his "duty" to take it on. "I knew that whichever way the evidence led us to decide would lead to a measure of opprobrium. I didn't realise the ability of the Right wing to sandbag to the extent that they have on me personally." The problem was that the inquiry turned from an investigation of an individual crime into an assessment of racism in society as a whole.

"It became symbolic," Sir William says. "I have never been involved in something which caused such ripples throughout the country."

The clan chief says: "I've got broad shoulders, but I'm never going to give another interview. From now on others will have to speak."