Victor Gordon-Lennox

Victor Charles Hugh Gordon-Lennox , also known as VCH Gordon-Lennox (born September 10, 1897 in London , † January 25, 1968 ) was a British journalist.

Life and activity

Gordon-Lennox was a son of Lord Walter Gordon-Lennox and his wife Alice Ogilvy-Grant. Through his father he came from the nobility (he was a descendant of the Stuart kings and grandson of the 6th Duke of Richmond ).

In his childhood, Gordon-Lennox first attended a preparatory school, but was then taught at home for health reasons (see Homeschooling ).

In 1915 (?) He passed the entrance exam for the University of Cambridge , but then volunteered for the British Army and joined the Grenadier Guards . With this - as part of the British Expeditionary Force - he took part in the First World War, in which he was wounded. After returning to London, he briefly returned to the grenadiers, but eventually had to quit due to illness. He retired with the rank of captain.

He then finished his studies at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His fellow students there included u. a. the future Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Anthony Eden , to whom he was still close when both journalists and politicians held leading positions in public life in Great Britain. In 1920 Gordon-Lennox was Secretary to the Commissioner for the Free City of Danzig , General Richard Haking .

In 1922 Gordon-Lennox became a journalist: from 1922 to 1929 he worked for the Daily Mail , from 1923 as a parliamentary correspondent, d. H. as rapporteur for the newspaper on the meetings of the House of Commons in London. In 1929 or 1930 he moved to the Daily Telegraph , in which he initially oversaw a column under the pseudonym Petersborough ("London Day by Day"), before he was given the highly coveted post of diplomatic correspondent of the newspaper in 1934 (until 1942). In this position he traveled mainly to the European continent in the following years and reported on the current centers in which the events that were decisive for the interstate relations of the European powers took place. In particular, he attended international conferences and negotiations as well as the meetings of the League of Nations in Geneva - often in the entourage of British Foreign Ministers .

From around 1934 Gordon-Lennox took a strongly critical stance towards National Socialist Germany, which was particularly reflected in the newsletter Whitehall Letter , which he published together with Hellen Kirkpatrick alongside his work for the Daily Herald since 1936 , in which he emphatically expressed himself spoke out against the appeasement policy of the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments towards the rulers in Berlin.

In his political attitude Gordon-Lennox was considered conservative, so he also belonged to the Carlton Club , which is considered conservative .

family

Gordon-Lennox married Dorothy Bridget Browne († 1963) on July 12, 1923. The marriage ended in divorce in 1928. In his second marriage he married Diana Elisabeth Constnace Kingsmill († 1982). This marriage ended in divorce in 1940. In 1958 he married Norah Julia Wensley in his third marriage.

The son Henry George Charles (* 1934) came from his second marriage.

literature

• Institute for Newspaper Studies at the University of Berlin: Handbook of the World Press. A representation of the newspaper system of all countries , 1937 p. 522. (edited by Karl Bömer , Emil Dovifat and others).
• Martin Gilbert : Winston S. Churchill , Vol. V, 1977, p. 639. (Short biography)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Essentially a factual short biography, but showing certain concessions to the compulsory representation resulting from the political conditions in Germany during the Nazi era.