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Ditchley
Ditchley Park is a country house near Charlbury in Oxfordshire, England. The estate was once the site of a Roman villa. Later it became a royal hunting ground, and then the property of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley. The 2nd Earl of Lichfield built the present house, designed by James Gibbs, in 1722. In 1933, the house was bought by an MP, Ronald Tree, whose wife Nancy Lancaster redecorated it in partnership with Sibyl Colefax. During the Second World War Winston Churchill used the house as a weekend retreat, due to concerns that his official country house, Chequers and his private country home, Chartwell, were vulnerable to enemy attack. After the war, Tree sold the house and estate to the 7th Earl of Wilton, who then sold it in 1953 to Sir David Wills of the Wills tobacco family. Wills established the Ditchley Foundation for the promotion of international relations and subsequently donated the house to the governing trust. Ditchley is a Grade I listed building. The park is li ...
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Ditchley Foundation
The Ditchley Foundation is a foundation that holds conferences, with a primary focus on British-American relations. It is based at Ditchley Park near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. It was established as a privately funded charity in 1958 by philanthropist Sir David Wills. Notable members * The Rt Hon. Lord Hill of Oareford, . Current chairman of Ditchley (2017- ). He also has roles as senior advisor, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (2017-); independent national director, ''Times'' Newspapers; and board member, Centre for Policy Studies. He was formerly European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (2014–16); Leader of the House of Lords and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (2013–14); Undersecretary of State for Schools (2010-2013). * The Rt Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, . He is also deputy-chairman of TNK-BP. He was NATO Secretary General from 1999 to 2003 and UK Defence Secretary from 1997 to 1999, chairman of the Ditc ...
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Ronald Tree
Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree (26 September 1897 – 14 July 1976) was a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and investor who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Harborough constituency in Leicestershire from 1933 to 1945. He later established the Sandy Lane resort in Barbados. Biography Tree's American-born father, Arthur Tree, was an English gentleman of leisure, self-identifying as a 'horse breeder and farmer' and son of Lambert Tree, a former U.S. minister to Russia. His mother, Ethel Field, was a daughter of Marshall Field, a co-founder of Marshall Field's department store in Chicago, Illinois. Born in Eastbourne, he was educated at Winchester College in England.Human Rights Commission & Marietta Peabody Tree biography [Baidu]  


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Henry Lee Of Ditchley
Sir Henry Lee KG (March 1533 – 12 February 1611), of Ditchley, was Queen's Champion and Master of the Armouries under Queen Elizabeth I of England. Family Henry Lee, born in Kent in March 1533, was the grandson of Sir Robert Lee (d.1539), and the eldest son of Sir Anthony Lee (d.1549) of Quarrendon, Buckinghamshire, by his first wife, Margaret Wyatt, daughter of Sir Henry Wyatt of Allington Castle, Kent by Anne Skinner, the daughter of John Skinner of Reigate, Surrey. Margaret Wyatt was a sister of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt. Lee had three younger brothers, Robert Lee (died c.1598), Thomas Lee, and Cromwell Lee (d.1601), who compiled an Italian-English dictionary. Lee also had an illegitimate half-brother, Sir Richard Lee (d.1608). Career Lee became Queen Elizabeth I's champion in 1570 and was appointed Master of the Armoury in 1580, an office which he held until his death. As Queen's Champion, Lee devised the Accession Day tilts held annually on 17 November, the ...
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Portraiture Of Elizabeth I Of England
The portraiture of Elizabeth I spans the evolution of English royal portraits in the early modern period (1400/1500-1800), depicting Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland (1533–1603), from the earliest representations of simple likenesses to the later complex imagery used to convey the power and aspirations of the state, as well as of the monarch at its head. Even the earliest portraits of Elizabeth I contain symbolic objects such as roses and prayer books that would have carried meaning to viewers of her day. Later portraits of Elizabeth layer the iconography of empire—globes, crowns, swords and columns—and representations of virginity and purity, such as moons and pearls, with classical allusions, to present a complex "story" that conveyed to Elizabethan era viewers the majesty and significance of the 'Virgin Queen'. Overview Portraiture in Tudor England Two portraiture traditions had arisen in the Tudor court since the days of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. T ...
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James Gibbs
James Gibbs (23 December 1682 – 5 August 1754) was one of Britain's most influential architects. Born in Aberdeen, he trained as an architect in Rome, and practised mainly in England. He is an important figure whose work spanned the transition between English Baroque architecture and Georgian architecture heavily influenced by Andrea Palladio. Among his most important works are St Martin-in-the-Fields (at Trafalgar Square), the cylindrical, domed Radcliffe Camera at Oxford University, and the Senate House at Cambridge University. Gibbs very privately was a Roman Catholic and a Tory. Because of this and his age, he had a somewhat removed relation to the Palladian movement which came to dominate English architecture during his career. The Palladians were largely Whigs, led by Lord Burlington and Colen Campbell, a fellow Scot who developed a rivalry with Gibbs. Gibbs' professional Italian training under the Baroque master Carlo Fontana also set him uniquely apart from the ...
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Nancy Lancaster
Nancy Lancaster (10 September 1897 – 19 August 1994) was a 20th-century tastemaker and the owner of Colefax & Fowler, an influential British decorating firm that codified what is known as the English country house look. Biography She was born Nancy Keene Perkins as the elder daughter of Thomas Moncure Perkins, a Virginia cotton broker, and his wife Elizabeth Langhorne, a daughter of Chiswell Langhorne. Her birthplace was Mirador, the estate farm of her maternal grandfather, in Greenwood, near Charlottesville, Virginia. She was brought up in Richmond, Virginia and New York City. Nancy Lancaster had four maternal aunts, of whom the most notable were Nancy, Lady Astor, a British politician, and Irene Gibson, wife of artist Charles Dana Gibson, who popularized the Gibson Girl. Her cousin Joyce Grenfell was a celebrated British monologuist and actress. Personal life First marriage Nancy was first married, in 1917, to Henry Field, an heir to the Marshall Field department s ...
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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl Of Rochester
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as for his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died as a result of venereal disease at the age of 33. Rochester was described by his contemporary Andrew Marvell as "the best English satirist," and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits. His poetry was widely censored during the Victorian era, but enjoyed a revival from the 1920s onwards, with reappraisals from noted literary figures such as Graham Greene and Ezra Pound. The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism. During his lifetime, Rochester was best known for ''A Satyr Against Reason and ...
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Henry Flitcroft
Henry Flitcroft (30 August 1697 – 25 February 1769) was a major English architect in the second generation of Palladianism. He came from a simple background: his father was a labourer in the gardens at Hampton Court and he began as a joiner by trade. Working as a carpenter at Burlington House, he fell from a scaffold and broke his leg. While he was recuperating, the young Lord Burlington noticed his talent with the pencil, and by 1720 Flitcroft was Burlington's draughtsman and general architectural assistant, surveying at Westminster School for Burlington's dormitory, and superintending at the site at Tottenham House. Working life in the inner circle that was driving the new Palladian architecture was an education for Flitcroft. Flitcroft redrew for publication the drawings for ''The Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones,'' published by William Kent in 1727, under Burlington's patronage and supervision. In May 1726 Burlington got his protégé an appointment at the Office of Works, where he ...
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Chequers
Chequers ( ), or Chequers Court, is the country house of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A 16th-century manor house in origin, it is located near the village of Ellesborough, halfway between Princes Risborough and Wendover in Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills. It is about north-west of central London. Coombe Hill, once part of the estate, is located northeast. Chequers has been the country home of the serving Prime Minister since 1921 after the estate was given to the nation by Sir Arthur Lee by a Deed of Settlement, given full effect in the Chequers Estate Act 1917. The house is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for England. Origin of the name The name "Chequers" may derive from an early owner of the manor of Ellesborough in the 12th century, Elias Ostiarius (or de Scaccario). The name "Ostiarius" meant an usher of the Court of the Exchequer and ''scacchiera'' means a chessboard in Italian. Elias Ostiarius's coat of ar ...
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Charlbury
Charlbury () is a town and civil parish in the Evenlode Evenlode is a village and civil parish ( ONS Code 23UC051) in the Cotswold District of eastern Gloucestershire in England. Evenlode is bordered by the Gloucestershire parishes of Moreton-in-Marsh to the northwest, Longborough and Donnington to ... valley, about north of Witney in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England. It is on the edge of Wychwood, Wychwood Forest and the Cotswolds. The United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,830. Place name Toponymy, Toponymic evidence suggests that Charlbury was an Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon settlement from an early date, and may be associated with 'Faerpinga in Middelenglum' listed in the Tribal Hidage of the 7th to 9th centuries. The name is a compound of two Old English elements. ''Burh'' is a fortified place. ''Ceorl'' (probably pronounced ) is a "freeman of the lowest class", but other sources suggest it was also a personal ...
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Chartwell
Chartwell is a country house near Westerham, Kent, in South East England. For over forty years it was the home of Winston Churchill. He bought the property in September 1922 and lived there until shortly before his death in January 1965. In the 1930s, when Churchill was out of political office, Chartwell became the centre of his world. At his dining table, he gathered those who could assist his campaign against German re-armament and the British government's response of appeasement; in his study, he composed speeches and wrote books; in his garden, he built walls, constructed lakes and painted. During the Second World War, Chartwell was largely unused, the Churchills returning after he lost the 1945 election. In 1953, when again prime minister, the house became Churchill's refuge when he suffered a debilitating stroke. In October 1964, he left for the last time, dying at his London home, 28 Hyde Park Gate, on 24 January 1965. The origins of the estate reach back to the 14th c ...
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George Lee, 2nd Earl Of Lichfield
George Henry Lee I, 2nd Earl of Lichfield (1690–1743) was a younger son of Edward Henry Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield and his wife Charlotte Fitzroy, an illegitimate daughter of Charles II by his mistress, the celebrated courtesan Barbara Villiers. On 14 July 1716 George Henry Lee succeeded his father as the 2nd Earl of Lichfield. Birth and origins George was born on 12 March 1690 in St. James Park, London. He was one of the ten children and the fourth of the sons of Edward Henry Lee and his wife Charlotte Fitzroy. His father was created Viscount Quarendon and Earl of Lichfield just before his marriage. George's mother was a natural daughter of Charles II and Barbara Villiers. Early life George became heir apparent and was given the corresponding courtesy title of Viscount Quarendon when his eldest brother, Edward Henry, died in 1713. On 14 July 1716 his father died and he succeeded as the 2nd Earl of Lichfield. Marriage and c ...
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