Batey [née Lever], Mavis Lilian (1921–2013), code-breaker and garden historian, was born on 5 May 1921 at 20 Crebor Street, Dulwich, London, the only daughter and younger child of Frederick (formerly Fred, later Stanley Frederick) Lever (1887/8–1971) and his wife, Lily Elizabeth, ...
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Francesca Greenoak
Beales, Peter Leslie (1936–2013), rose breeder and historian, was born on 22 July 1936 at May Farm, Banningham, Norfolk, the elder child and only son of Evelyn May Beales (1916–2006), domestic servant, who in 1938 married Walter John Howes (1900–1970). He was brought up for his first eight years by his maternal grandparents and their family, and then by his mother and stepfather. He rejoiced in his early childhood and the garden where he recalled that the only ornamental plant among greens and vegetables was a fine bush of the rose ‘Maiden's blush’ cherished by his grandfather (who died when ...
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William Beckford (1744–1799) by unknown engraver, pubd 1799 (after John? Miers) © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Richard B. Sheridan
Beckford, William (1744–1799), sugar planter and historian, was born in Jamaica in 1744, the son and heir of Richard Beckford (d. 1756) and his common-law wife, Elizabeth Hay. His uncle was William Beckford, lord mayor of London, and his first cousin was ...
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Robert Clutterbuck (1772–1831) by William Bond (after William Henry Hunt, c. 1815) © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Lionel M. Munby
Clutterbuck, Robert (1772–1831), local historian and landowner, was born and baptized at Watford House, High Street, Watford, in Hertfordshire, on 28 January 1772. He was the eldest surviving son of Thomas Clutterbuck the younger (1744–1791) and Sarah Thurgood (1749–1788), daughter of Robert and ...
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Vicary Gibbs (1853–1932) by Lafayette, 1927 © National Portrait Gallery, London
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P. W. Hammond
Gibbs, Vicary (1853–1932), genealogist and gardener, was born at Hampstead, Middlesex, on 12 May 1853, the second surviving son of the prominent banker Henry Hucks Gibbs (1819–1907) and his wife, Louisa Anne (d. 1897), third daughter of Dr William Adams. He was great-great-nephew of the judge ...
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Long, Edward (1734–1813), planter and commentator on Jamaican affairs, was born on 23 August 1734 at Rosilion, St Blazey, Cornwall, the fourth son of Samuel Long (1700–1757) of Longville, Jamaica, Tredudwell, Cornwall, and Bloomsbury, London, and Mary (bap. 1701, d. 1765), second daughter and coheir of ...
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Roy Martin Haines
More [Moore], Sir Thomas Laurence de la (fl. 1327–1358), landowner and supposed chronicler, was the son of John Laurence de la More and a kinsman (nepos), possibly nephew, of Archbishop John Stratford (c. 1275–1348). Thomas's wife was called Isabel, a name also borne by ...
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Francesca Greenoak
Nicholson [née Weeks], (Lorna) Rosemary (1919–2004), garden historian and museum founder, was born on 3 July 1919 at 17 Alexander Road, Southport, Lancashire, the youngest of the five children of Robert Foster Jeffrey Weeks, a mining engineer and a former officer in the ...
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Richard Rathbone
Oliver, Roland Anthony (1923–2014), historian, was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, India, on 30 March 1923, the only son of Maj. Douglas Roderick Giffard Oliver (1880–1936), an officer in the Indian Army and later a member of the Indian Political Service, and his wife ...
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John Cripps
revised by John Martin
Orwin, Charles Stewart (1876–1955), agricultural economist and historian, was born on 26 September 1876 at Horsham, Sussex, the only son of Frederick James Orwin and Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Campbell Stewart, of Blackheath, and niece of George Gawler, governor of South Australia (1838–41). Born into a medical family with a reputation for independent, radical thinking, from his earliest days ...
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Spufford [née Clark], (Honor) Margaret (1935–2014), historian and Benedictine oblate, was born on 10 December 1935 at 7 Walnut Lane, Hartford, Cheshire, the second daughter of Leslie Marshall Clark (1897–1953) and his wife Mary, née Johnson (...
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Maker: Walter Stoneman
Giles Stephen Holland Fox- Strangways, sixth earl of Ilchester (1874–1959) by Walter Stoneman, 1922 © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Simon Nowell-Smith
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Strangways, Giles Stephen Holland Fox-, sixth earl of Ilchester (1874–1959), landowner and historian, was born on 31 May 1874 at his father's town house in Belgrave Square, London. The elder son of the fifth earl, Henry Edward Fox-Strangways (1847–1905), and his wife, Lady Mary Eleanor Anne Dawson (1852–1928)...
