Arms of Wyndham, Baron Leconfield and Egremont

John Max Henry Scawen Wyndham, 7th Baron Leconfield, 2nd Baron Egremont FRSL DL (born 21 April 1948), generally known as Max Egremont, is a British

biographer Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Biographers Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...

and

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

. Egremont is the eldest son of John Edward Reginald Wyndham, 6th Baron Leconfield and 1st Baron Egremont, and Pamela Wyndham-Quin, and succeeded his father in 1972. He is a direct descendant of Sir John Wyndham. He married Caroline Nelson, the garden designer, in 1978 and they have four children, three daughters and a son. He lives at the family seat of

Petworth House Petworth House in the parish of Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century Grade I listed country house, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the design of the architect Anthony Sa ...

in Sussex, which his family gave to the National Trust in 1947.

Early life

Egremont grew up in Petworth in West Sussex. He was educated first at

Heatherdown School Heatherdown School, formally called Heatherdown Preparatory School, was an independent preparatory school for boys, near Ascot, in the English county of Berkshire. Set in of grounds, it typically taught between eighty and ninety boys between t ...

near Ascot, then at

Eton College Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, ...

and at Christ Church, Oxford where he read modern history.

Career

He has worked for the American publishing firm Crowell Collier Macmillan and on the staff of U.S. Senator

Hugh Scott Hugh Doggett Scott Jr. (November 11, 1900 – July 21, 1994) was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1959 and in the U.S. Senate, from 195 ...

in Washington. After his father's death in 1972, Egremont moved to Petworth and became the 2nd Baron Egremont and 7th Baron Leconfield.

Writing

Egremont’s first book ''The Cousins: The Friendship, Opinions and Activities of

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922), sometimes spelt Wilfred, was an English poet and writer. He and his wife Lady Anne Blunt travelled in the Middle East and were instrumental in preserving the Arabian horse bloodlines ...

and

George Wyndham George Wyndham, PC (29 August 1863 – 8 June 1913) was a British Conservative politician, statesman, man of letters, and one of The Souls. Background and education Wyndham was the elder son of the Honourable Percy Wyndham, third son of Ge ...

'' was published in 1977 and won the '' Yorkshire Post'' Prize for the best first book of that year. His next work was ''Balfour: A Life of

Arthur James Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (, ; 25 July 184819 March 1930), also known as Lord Balfour, was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As foreign secretary in the ...

'', published in 1980. He then wrote four novels, ''The Ladies’ Man'' (1983), ''Dear Shadows'' (1986), ''Painted Lives'' (1989) and ''Second Spring'' (1993). His biography of Major General Sir

Edward Spears Major-General Sir Edward Louis Spears, 1st Baronet, (7 August 1886 – 27 January 1974) was a British Army officer and Member of Parliament noted for his role as a liaison officer between British and French forces in two world wars. Spears was a ...

, ''Under Two Flags'', was published in 1997 and was short listed for the Westminster Medal for Military History. He was appointed to be the official biographer of Siegfried Sassoon by Sassoon’s son George. Egremont’s ''Siegfried'' Sassoon came out in 2005 and was short listed for the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...

. In 2011 he published ''Forgotten Land, Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia''. In 2014, he published ''Some Desperate Glory, the First World War the Poets Knew''. In 2017 Egremont was joint author with Frances Carey of '' Käthe Kollwitz, Portrait of the Artist'', the catalogue that accompanied a travelling exhibition of Kollwitz’s work. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2001. Egremont’s short book ''The Connel Guide to World War 1'' was published in 2017.

Other Interests

He was a trustee of the Wallace Collection from 1988 to 2000, of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

from 1990 to 2000, and a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts from 1989 to 2001. He has been chairman of the Friends of the National Libraries since 1985 and of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust since 1995. He is President of the Sussex Heritage Trust and of the Sussex branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

Books

* ''The Cousins'' (William Collins 1977) * ''Balfour'' (William Collins1980) * ''The Ladies’ Man'' (Secker & Warburg 1983) * ''Dear Shadows'' (Secker & Warburg 1986) * ''Painted Lives'' (Hamish Hamilton 1989) * ''Second Spring'' (Hamish Hamilton 1993) * ''Under Two Flags'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997) * ''Siegfried Sassoon: A Poet and His Library'' (Grolier Club 2002) * ''Siegfried Sassoon'' (Picador 2005) * ''Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia'' (Picador 2011) * ''Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew'' (Picador 2014) * ''Käthe Kollwitz'', with Frances Carey (British Museum 2018) * ''All You Need to Know About World War 1'' (Connel 2018) *''The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2021)

References

External links

Google book search list of books by Max Egremont
Retrieved 2009-07-03 {{DEFAULTSORT:Egremont, Max Wyndham, 2nd Baron 1948 births Living people People educated at Eton College Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford English biographers Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Eldest sons of British hereditary barons Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Deputy Lieutenants of West Sussex Max