Richard Pope-Hennessy

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Richard Pope-Hennessy
1927 Richard Pope-Hennessy.jpg
Richard Pope-Hennessy in 1927
Born1875
Died1 March 1942
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchBritish Army
RankMajor-General
Commands held4th Battalion, King's African Rifles
1st Bn, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
50th (Northumbrian) Division
Battles/warsSecond Boer War
First World War
AwardsCompanion of the Order of the Bath
Distinguished Service Order

Major-General Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy CB DSO (1875 – 1 March 1942) was a British Army officer and Liberal Party politician of Irish Catholic descent.

Background[]

A young Richard, pictured with his parents

He was the eldest son of Sir John Pope-Hennessy MP, of Rostellan Castle, County Cork and Catherine Elizabeth Low. He was educated at Beaumont College.[1]

Military career[]

Pope-Hennessy was commissioned into the Oxfordshire Light Infantry in 1895.[1] He was deployed to South Africa and served with the West African Frontier Force during the Second Boer War.[1] He subsequently became commandant of the 4th Battalion, King's African Rifles in 1906 for which service was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in 1908.[1]

During the First World War he became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in Mesopotamia in 1916 and then became a staff officer with the British Indian Army in 1917.[1][2]

After the war he served as a staff officer at the War Office and then was Military Inter-Allied Commissioner of Control in Berlin. Subsequently he spent three years as military attaché in Washington D.C.[3] He became General Officer Commanding 50th (Northumbrian) Division in 1931 before retiring in 1935.[4]

Pope-Hennessy published a number of books an articles on military matters and in one of them he predicted the technique of the German Blitzkrieg.[2]

Political career[]

He took particular interest in military matters and in issues affecting his native Ireland. In 1919 he had published 'The Irish Dominion: a Method of Approach to a Settlement'.[1] He was Liberal candidate for the Tonbridge Division of Kent at the 1935 General Election. Tonbridge was a safe Conservative seat that they had won at every election since it was created in 1918. The Liberal Party had not fielded a candidate at the previous General election and he was not expected to win and finished a poor third.[5]

General Election 1935: Tonbridge[5] Electorate 56,106
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Rt Hon. Herbert Henry Spender-Clay 23,460 61.3
Labour F M Landau 9,405 24.6
Liberal Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy 5,403 14.1
Majority 14,055 36.7
Turnout 68.2
Conservative hold Swing

Family[]

He married, in 1910, Una Birch a writer, historian and biographer. They had two sons,[1] James who became a writer and John an art historian.[6]

Death[]

Friary Churchyard of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley, 2017

He died in 1942 and is buried alongside his wife at Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley.[7]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Thom's Irish who's who. Alexander Thom. 1923. p. 208.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b James Wassermann (ed.): Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons and the French Revolution. Nicolas Hayes, 2007, ISBN 978-0892541324, pp. 49-50
  3. ^ The Times House of Commons, 1935
  4. ^ "Army Commands" (PDF). Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, Craig, F. W. S.
  6. ^ Quennell, P., Introduction to A Lonely Business – A Self-Portrait of James Pope-Hennessy, 1981, p. xv.
  7. ^ "Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy". Find A Grave Memorial. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
Military offices
Preceded by
Henry Newcome
GOC 50th (Northumbrian) Division
1931–1935
Succeeded by
William Herbert
Retrieved from ""