Esmond Romilly

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Esmond Marcus David Romilly, (June 10, 1918–November 30, 1941), was a well-born British socialist and anti-fascist. His mother was the natural daughter of Lady Blanche Henrietta Hozier (1852–1925), daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie and second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier (1838–1907); her father may well have been Wilfred Scawen Blunt. ^[1] He was therefore (half-)nephew to Winston Churchill's wife, another natural daughter.

Educated at Wellington College, he and his brother Giles refused to join the Officers' Training Corps, distributed pacifist leaflets, and ultimately ran away from school. They published a book about the experience, Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles and Esmond Romilly (1935). Esmond moved to London, working in a Communist bookshop and founding a centre for other boys who had "escaped" from public schools. His activities at such a young age, of turning his back on class privilege so ostentatiously, won the attention of the newspapers, eager to report on the doings of Winston Churchill's "red nephew".

As the political situation across Europe continued to polarise, and with the stormclouds of war becoming ever more visible, Romilly's anti-fascism clashed increasingly with his pacifism. The outbreak of Spanish Civil War decided him. He bicycled to Marseille and joined the International Brigades, hoping he would be accepted despite his lack of military training. With a minimum of preparation, he and other ill-assorted volunteers were thrown into the defence of Madrid. Almost all his companions were killed; he was invalided out with dysentery, and sent back to England to recover. While recuperating, he met his second cousin, Jessica Mitford, all the more ardent an anti-fascist for her elder sisters' strong Nazi sympathies (Diana married the leader of the British fascist party and Unity was a friend of Adolf Hitler). They fell in love, and created an elaborate plot that allowed them to elope to Spain. Romilly took up journalism, sending back war news, along with his friend Philip Toynbee, who later wrote his memoirs. After some legal difficulties, Romilly and Mitford married; they were both 19. He spent his honeymoon writing Boadilla, an account of his Spanish experiences.

They returned to England, but soon decided to move to the United States, where he picked up a variety of odd jobs: selling silk stockings door to door, setting up a bar in Miami. They were perpetually short of cash. When Britain declared war on Germany at the beginning of World War II, he moved to Canada to volunteer. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea in 1941 after a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. He was 23.

He had two children with Jessica: Julia December 20, 1937, who died in a measles epidemic in May 1938; and Constancia (better known as 'Dinky' or 'Donk') on February 9, 1941.

It was rumoured during his life that he was the result of an affair between his mother and Winston Churchill. The news that his plane had gone missing in action was broken to his wife Jessica Mitford by Churchill personally; she took many months to accept that he had died.