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Aubrey Herbert
The Hon. Aubrey Herbert ( 1880-1923) was a remarkable and somewhat eccentric figure in Edwardian England. The second son of the 4th Earl of Carnavon, he was educated at Oxford University where he was famous for daring exploits and numbered among his friends Adrian Carton De Wiart, Raymond Asquith, John Buchan and Hilaire Belloc. The Middle Eastern traveller and advisor, Sir Mark Sykes, was another friend. He was a half brother to the famous Egyptologist, George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon who discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb.
Herbert was in his own right a considerable Orientalist, a linguist who spoke seven languages, a renowned traveller, especially in the Middle East and a passionate advocate of Albanian independence.He was twice offered the throne of Albania. He was a very independent Conservative Member of Parliament. During the First World War he was wounded in France (Irish Guards), taken prisoner, escaped and was later involved with British Intelligence, working with, among others, T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. He and Lawrence made an unsuccessful attempt to bribe a Turkish officer to allow the escape of British troops surrounded at Kut al Amara.
Aubrey Herbert married Mary, daughter of the 4th Viscount de Vesci, a member of the Protestant Ascendency in Ireland. They had four children, one of whom, Laura, married the celebrated novelist, Evelyn Waugh.They maintained a country residence at Pixton on Dartmoor in Devon and a villa on the Gulf of Genoa at Portofino.
It is widely believed that Herbert is the inspiration for the character, Sandy Arbuthnot, a hero in several of John Buchan novels including Greenmantle.
Bibliography
"The Decline and Fall Of the British Aristocracy" by David Cannandine, Picador, London, 1992
"The Asquiths" by Colin Clifford, John Murray, London, 2003
"Hillaire Belloc" by A.N. Wilson, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1986
"Desert Queen" by Janet Wallach, Anchor Books, New York, 1999
"John Buchan, A Biography" by Janet Adam Smith, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985
"Evelyn Waugh, Vol. 1, The Early Years 1903-1939" by Martin Stannard, Flamingo, Hammersmith, London, 1993
"Evelyn Waugh, A Biography" by Christopher Sykes, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1977
"John Buchan, The Presbyterian Cavalier" by Andrew Lownie, McArthur and Company, Toronto, 2004
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