Name Henry 11th Role 11th Earl of Portland | Died January 30, 1997 Books Isoworg | |
Spouse Pauline Ursula Mellowes (m. 1940–1967) Children Timothy Bentinck, Anna Bentinck, Sorrel Bentinck Parents Robert Charles Graf Bentinck, Lady Norah Ida Emily Noel Similar People Timothy Bentinck, William Bentinck - 1st Earl of, Judy Bentinck | ||
The Earl of Portland's maiden speech to the House of Lords. January 1993
Henry Noel Bentinck, 11th Earl of Portland, Count Bentinck und Waldeck Limpurg (2 October 1919 – 30 January 1997) was a British Army officer, peer, and intellectual.
Contents
- The Earl of Portlands maiden speech to the House of Lords January 1993
- Early life and education
- Career
- Marriages and children
- Peerages
- References
Early life and education
Bentinck was born in 1919. His father Robert Charles Bentinck, 6th Count Bentinck (1875–1932) died when Bentinck was only twelve. He was a descendant of the Honourable William Bentinck, 1st Count Bentinck (1704–1774), younger son of William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland, and half-brother of Henry Bentinck, 1st Duke of Portland. His mother Lady Norah Ida Emily Noel, eldest daughter of Charles William Francis Noel, 3rd Earl of Gainsborough, died when he was 19.
He was educated at Harrow and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, but left after only a term amidst press headlines - "Count missing from Sandhurst". He worked as a cowboy in California for a year, returning to England in 1939 and marrying Pauline Ursula Mellowes in 1940. He registered as a conscientious objector, but after the death of a close friend he joined the family regiment, the Coldstream Guards, as a private soldier. He was soon commissioned as an officer and served with distinction in Italy at Camino. He was wounded twice, and then was a prisoner of war until 1945, when he was able to rejoin his regiment in Trieste.
Career
After the war he was a producer at the BBC. From 1952 to 1955 he worked as a jackaroo on a sheep station in Tasmania.
He rejoined the BBC, as producer of the Today programme presented by Jack de Manio and other series. At this time he wrote his first book, Anyone Can Understand the Atom. In 1959 he joined J. Walter Thompson as an advertising producer, working on over 600 commercials. He created and produced the Nimble bread balloon commercials, as well as the first campaign for Mr Kipling, himself coining the phrase, "Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good cakes".
He moved to Devon in 1974 with his second wife Jenny Hopkins to run a self-sufficient organic smallholding and guest-house for six years. Later he struck up a close friendship with James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, and published Life is a Sum Humanity Is Doing Wrong.
Marriages and children
He was married to Pauline Mellowes from 1940 until her death in 1967; they had three children:
He married secondly, Jenifer Hopkins, in 1974. She died in 2016.
Peerages
With the death of his father in 1932 he became Count Bentinck and Waldeck Limpurg of the Holy Roman Empire, a foreign title which may be used in the United Kingdom due to a royal licence of 1886.
In 1990, on the death of his distant cousin the 9th Duke of Portland, he succeeded to the Earldom of Portland through his descent from the first Earl. One of the last generation of hereditary peers to take a seat in the House of Lords by direct inheritance, his maiden speech in the Lords in January 1993 was on the 9th report of the European Communities Committee on the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Legislation, when he spoke in favor of limits to economic and population growth on ecological grounds.