Sir Fulque Agnew, 10th Baronet

Sir Fulque Melville Gerald Noel Agnew, 10th Baronet, (6 October 1900 - 28 August 1975) was the son of Major Charles Hamlyn Agnew and Lillian Anne Murray

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He succeeded as 10th Baronet Agnew, of Lochnaw on his uncle's death on 14 July 1928. In practice, he did not use the title. On his own death in 1975 he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son.

Education

He attended Harrow School, and the University of Edinburgh as a mature student in the 1940s.

Career

In the Great War he ran away from school at the age 17 to join the Machine Gun Corps, under age, as a private. He later flew in the Royal Flying Corps; he was shot down and slightly wounded and is said to have been Mentioned in Despatches.

He went on to lead an itinerant life, including travelling in China and Germany. As with much of his early life, hard facts are difficult to ascertain.

During the Second World War he registered as a conscientious objector, and served in the Friends Ambulance Unit in Greece.

In 1948 he emigrated to farm in South Africa. In 1952 he was appointed Registrar of Fort Hare University, Cape Province, the only university awarding degrees to blacks, and his wife, Swanzie, taught geography. They allied with the opponents of apartheid, and when, in 1960, the army was sent in to clamp down on unrest, the Agnews protested strongly. In return, they, and other British staff, were expelled from South Africa.

Back in Britain, Agnew went to work for the University of Cambridge's Department of Education. In 1965 Swanzie Agnew was elected first Professor of Geography at the University of Malawi, and Agnew joined her as Assistant Registrar at the university. The increasing intransigence of the Hastings Banda government, however, made life intolerable, and they eventually resigned and returned to Britain.

Family

He married Swanzie Erskine (1916-2001), daughter of Major Esmé Nourse Erskine and Elizabeth Susan Matilda Reinders (9 October 1937), and had issue:
*Crispin Agnew, 11th Baronet (b.1944)

References

* [http://www.thepeerage.com/p12223.htm#i122229 thePeerage.com]
*‘AGNEW, Fulque Melville Gerald Noel’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007
* Obituary, Swanzie Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, "Daily Telegraph", 23 August 2001
*A Tegla Davies: "Friends Ambulance Unit", 1947