Captain

Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)

Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...

 Philip Russell Rendel Dunne, MC

Military Cross

The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....

 (28 February 1904 – 13 April 1965) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 soldier and politician.
Lord of the Manor of Leinthall Earls.

He was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Marten Dunne

Edward Marten Dunne

Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Marten Dunne was a British army officer and Liberal politician.He was the third son of Thomas Dunne of Gatley Park and Bircher Hall, Herefordshire and his wife, Harriet...

 (1864–1944), Liberal Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) for Walsall

Walsall (UK Parliament constituency)

Walsall was a borough constituency centred on the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system....

 (1906–1910), of Gatley Park, Leominster, Herefordshire, by his wife Hon. Grace Rendel (d.1952), J.P., third daughter and co-heiress of the only Lord Rendel of Hatchlands

Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel

Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel was a British industrialist, philanthropist and Liberal politician. He sat Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire between 1880 and 1894 and was recognised as the leader of the Welsh MP's...

.
Educated at Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and RMC Sandhurst

Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...

, Dunne joined the 11th Hussars in 1924, and served with the Royal Horse Guards

Royal Horse Guards

The Royal Horse Guards was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry.Founded August 1650 in Newcastle Upon Tyne by Sir Arthur Haselrig on the orders of Oliver Cromwell as the Regiment of Cuirassiers, the regiment became the Earl of Oxford's Regiment during the reign of...

 from 1928 to 1932. He married firstly 29 April 1930 (dissolved by divorce 1944), Margaret Ann Walker, daughter of Thomas Hood Walker of Crosbie Tower, Troon

Troon

Troon is a town in South Ayrshire. It is situated on the west coast of Scotland, about eight miles north of Ayr and three miles northwest of Glasgow Prestwick International Airport. Lying across the Firth of Clyde, the Isle of Arran can be seen. Troon is also a port with freight and ferry services...

, Ayrshire. They had two sons and a daughter:

• Sir Thomas Dunne
  Thomas Dunne (courtier)
  Sir Thomas Raymond Dunne, KG, KCVO, JP was the Lord Lieutenant of Hereford and Worcester from 1977, then from 1998 the Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire until 2001 and the Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire until 2008.Dunne was born in 1933, the son of the soldier and politician Philip Russell...
  
  , Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire, and the father of Philip Dunne M.P.
  Philip Dunne (politician)
  Philip Martin Dunne is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament for the Ludlow constituency in Shropshire....
  
  .
• Martin Dunne, Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire.
• Philippa Ann Dunne (The Countess Jellicoe), wife to George, 2nd Earl Jellicoe
  George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe
  George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe, KBE, DSO, MC, PC, FRS was a British politician and statesman, diplomat and businessman....
  
  .

Elected Conservative

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 (Unionist) M.P. in the 1935 general election for the Stalybridge and Hyde division of Cheshire, with a majority of 5,081 over Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

, he resigned in 1937 by becoming Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.

In the Second World War Dunne was a British Commando in the No. 8 (Guards) Commando

No. 8 (Guards) Commando

No. 8 Commando was a unit of the British Commandos and part of the British Army during the Second World War. The Commando was formed in June 1940 primarily from members of the Brigade of Guards. It was one of the units selected to be sent to the Middle East as part of Layforce...

 in the White's Club group of the Layforce

Layforce

Layforce was an ad hoc military formation of the British Army consisting of a number of commando units during the Second World War.Formed in February 1941 under the command of Colonel Robert Laycock, after whom the force was named, it consisted of approximately 2,000 men and served in the Middle...

 Commandos (Special Service Troop) in the Middle East, having sailed there in early 1941 on the boat with Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

, Randolph Churchill

Randolph Churchill

Major Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill, MBE was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston from 1940 to 1945....

, George Jellicoe

George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe

George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe, 2nd Earl Jellicoe, KBE, DSO, MC, PC, FRS was a British politician and statesman, diplomat and businessman....

, David Stirling

David Stirling

Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, DFC, OBE was a Scottish laird, mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.-Life before the war:...

, etal. His Military Cross was awarded in 1943. He was Joint Master of the Warwickshire Hounds 1932–1935, and he was a member of White's, Turf

Turf Club

Turf Club may refer to: * Turf Club , a club in London, UK* Turf Club, Gauteng, a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa* Turf Club , a live music venue in Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S....

 and Jockey

Jockey Club

The Jockey Club is the largest commercial organisation in British horseracing. Although no longer responsible for the governance and regulation of the sport, it owns 14 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree, Cheltenham and Newmarket, amongst other concerns such as the National Stud and...

 clubs.

He married a secondly 18 September 1945 Audrey Mary, daughter of Charles Ringham Simpson, of Ramsay St. Mary's, Huntingdonshire and widow of Bernard Rubin

Bernard Rubin

Bernard Rubin was a British racing driver and pilot who was a member of the "Bentley Boys" team at the Bentley Motor Company and winner of the 1928 24 Hours of Le Mans.-Personal life:...

 (d. 1936).

He died in 1965 at Brompton Hospital

Royal Brompton Hospital

Royal Brompton Hospital is the largest specialist heart and lung centre in the United Kingdom .The hospital is part of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust is a national and international specialist heart and lung centre based in Chelsea, London and Harefield, Middlesex...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Of Captain Philip Dunne Lord Lovat

Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat

Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat and 4th Baron Lovat DSO, MC, TD was the 25th Chief of the Clan Fraser and a prominent British Commando during the Second World War...

 wrote:

'Phil Dunne possessed the light touch; also the balanced ease and elegance on a horse so highly commended by Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. This seat and its look depends as much on quiet hands as long, slim legs, and here he had the pull over all his contemporaries. I think he was Riding Master in the Blues when I first saw him (thirty-five years ago next season) going great guns across the big Grafton country after a Hunt Ball; the blood horse, his own good looks, turn-out and style-possibly a reputation of the kind that jumps in and out over locked railway gates at Weedon-made the same vivid impression as the redoubtable ‘Boots Brownrigg’ left on a youthful Sherston in the story immortalised by Siegfried Sassoon.

Such a heady image could only fade away, or end in a Cottage Hospital, and the dashing hero of those undergraduate days did less than justice to the man, for Phil was never competitive, but simply a law unto himself; this told against him at a time when he should have been getting on in the world, for then, as now, a certain pomposity was expected from every ambitious young man. The lack of it could prevent first-class ability being taken seriously. Phil was neither pompous nor ambitious, nor did he suffer fools gladly. He had the kind of twinkle that sometimes debunked and seldom reassured his superiors.

Perhaps his heart was never in peacetime soldiering; he soon tired of the House of Commons, and even his routine duties as Master of the Warwickshire Hounds irked his restless nature. Everything he set out to do he did extremely well, and yet one sensed he was thoroughly dissatisfied.

The war came at the right moment for Philip Dunne. In a commando raised from the Brigade of Guards and Household Cavalry, with many of his best friends serving in the ranks, all under the command of Bob Laycock, he truly found himself, and emerged from the crucible a kinder, happier and very much loved man.'

Major-General Sir Robert Laycock

Robert Laycock

Major General Sir Robert Edward Laycock KCMG, CB, DSO, KStJ was a British soldier, most famous for his service with the commandos during the Second World War...

 wrote:

'Bravery and gaiety are the first two words that spring to the minds of those of us who were Philip's friends and that must include all who knew him for his charm was inimitable. Some of that charm lay in the fact that personal ambition was wholly lacking in his character and, though everything he undertook in a diversity of fields he tackled with spectacular ability, the limelight was anathema to him. At Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 he won the Quarter Mile and was probably one of the best flies whoever played the Field because he thought it more worth while to play in the House side which, as Captain of Games, he led to victory in the House Cup.
Being a born leader and a superb horseman he could have commanded The Blues, but he realized that the days of the horsed cavalry were over and, not being mechanically minded, he left the Army.
In the Second World War he volunteered to join the Commandos

British Commandos

The British Commandos were formed during the Second World War in June 1940, following a request from the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, for a force that could carry out raids against German-occupied Europe...

 on their inception and served with them with distinction. Being the bravest of the brave it is not surprising that he was decorated with the Military Cross for gallantry in the field. He was a superb leader and hero-worshipped by his subordinates but, because he admired the rank and file who served under him and wanted to get to grips with the enemy in the closest contact with them, he preferred to remain a Troop Leader rather than take a much higher command which was offered him.
In the days of peace which followed he loved racing and was a successful breeder and owner. He was made a member of the Jockey Club

Jockey Club

The Jockey Club is the largest commercial organisation in British horseracing. Although no longer responsible for the governance and regulation of the sport, it owns 14 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree, Cheltenham and Newmarket, amongst other concerns such as the National Stud and...

 and the racing world will miss him as sadly as do all of us to whom his loyalty, courage, optimism and friendship are irreplaceable' (from The Times, 21 April 1965).

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) often refers to his friend, who for the purpose of differentiation (from another Philip Dunne) he called 'Scum' Dunne, in his letters to Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford

Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years...

:

'Darling Nancy, ... I went to London for one night for Philip Dunne's wedding- the old number eight commando gang in force and champagne in cascades' (25 September 1945)

'Darling Nancy, ...It was heaven to get home, to walk into White's and find Sykes & Dunne & Stavordale all drunk & eating grouse, and to hear a member of committee say that Quennell

Peter Quennell

Sir Peter Courtney Quennell CBE was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic....

 had 'not a hope in hell' of election.' (29 August 1949)

The last paragraph of Waugh's last diary, written on Easter Day 1965, read:

'On Maundy Thursday appeared a notice in the paper under the heading 'Death of Former Unionist MP'. I did not recognise this as Phil Dunne until Christopher Sykes

Christopher Sykes (author)

Christopher Hugh Sykes FRSL was an English author. Born into a wealthy north-of-England land-owning family, he was the second son of the diplomat Sir Mark Sykes ....

 told me on Saturday. He was my age. I last saw him just before Christmas, elegant gay, and I thought how little he had aged compared with myself. He was completely selfish without an element of conceit or self-assertion, debonair, never boring, never morose; a finely controlled tempation to malice; chivalrous, with a sense of private honour uncommon nowadays. Though I saw him seldom in late years, a deeply valued friend whom I shall miss bitterly', (from The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, p.793).

External links