- Lewis Gielgud
Lewis Evelyn Gielgud, MBE (
June 11 1894 –February 25 1953 ,Paris ) was a British scholar, writer, intelligence officer and humanitarian worker.Life
Lewis was the eldest son of Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud, and an elder brother to the broadcaster
Val Gielgud and the actorJohn Gielgud . He attendedEton College as aKing's Scholar and then studied atMagdalen College, Oxford as an exhibitioner in 1912 and a classical demy in 1913. On the outbreak of theFirst World War he became an officer in the 6th Battalion, The King's Shropshire Light Infantry, but left active service after being wounded in 1915. He spent the rest of the war with theWar Office (1916-17) and British Military Mission in Paris (1917-19).After the war he joined the staff of the
International League of Red Cross Societies , rising to Under-Secretary General in 1927 and marrying Zita Gordon in 1937 (they had only one child, a daughter). He travelled far and wide for the organisation, organising international Red Cross conferences and giving lectures and broadcasts for them, but resigned from the organisation on the outbreak of theSecond World War . He was given another army commission in 1940, serving in the War Office again and then being transferred to theIntelligence Corps (being promoted to his final rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the latter in 1942). Released from the army in 1944, he returned to the Red Cross in 1945 as their sub-commissioner inParis .He was Co-Ordinating Officer of the Inter Allied Reparation Agency in
Brussels from 1946 to 1949, a counsellor of OEEC from 1949 to 1951, and a senior official withUNESCO from 1951 until his death shortly after an operation in Paris in 1953. He and Zita divorced in 1951.Works
*"Red Scroll", a novel
*"The Wise Child", a novel
*A book on travel
*Several translations and radio plays
*Three plays written withNaomi Mitchison (Lewis was close friends with her and her brotherJ. B. S. Haldane )
*"The Vigil of Venus" (1952) [http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/stmary/018394.shtml]External links
*http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/oxpoetry/index/ig.html
* [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74146?docPos=1 DNB entry on John Gielgud] , with information on Lewis
* [http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/815/610/26757867w16/purl=rc2_TTDA_1_Lewis+Gielgud_________________________________________________________________________________________&dyn=sig!2?sw_aep=britmus Obituary of Lewis Gielgud] , "The Times ", Thursday, February 26, 1953; page 10
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