Somerset de Chair

Somerset Struben de Chair (22 August 1911 – 5 January 1995) was an English author, politician, and poet. He edited several volumes of the memoirs of Napoleon. Early and personal life De Chair was the younger son of Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, KCB, KCMG, MVO, and Enid, daughter of Henry William Struben, of Transvaal, South Africa. The de Chair family were of Huguenot origin, descending from Rene de la Chaire, whose grandson, Jean Francois, Councillor to Charles IX, was created a Marquis in 1600 by Henry IV. The family became English gentry through generations of clergymen. He married firstly, on 8 October 1932, Thelma Grace (1911–1974), daughter of Harold Dennison Arbuthnot, of Merristwood Hall, Worplesdon, Surrey. They had two sons: Rodney Somerset and Peter Dudley, and divorced in 1950. He married secondly, in 1957, Mrs (June) Carmen Appleton, daughter of A. G. Bowen, of Brabourne, Kent. They had two sons: Rory and Somerset Carlo, and divorced in 1957. In 1958 de Chair married his third wife, Mrs Margaret Patricia Manlove, daughter of K. E. Field-Hart; they had a daughter, Teresa Loraine Aphrodite (who married Sir Toby Clarke, 6th Baronet). The third marriage ended in divorce in 1974, and that year he married his fourth wife, Lady Juliet Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, only child of Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, who had divorced Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol in 1972. Somerset and Lady Juliet had a daughter, Helena, who married Jacob Rees-Mogg. The hurdler Sir Charles Lawrence Somerset Clarke, 7th Baronet is his grandson and the Member of Parliament Theo Clarke is his granddaughter. Career Somerset de Chair was educated at The King's School, Parramatta in New South Wales between 1923 and 1930 before attending Balliol College, Oxford.