Joint Managing Director of South American Saint Line and son of Thomas Howard de Walden
More information can be found in a 1948 edition of Sea Breezes
John O Scott-Ellis
9th Baron Howard de Walden
Lord Howard de Walden, landlord to many eminent figures in the medical profession and last of the great British racehorse owner-breeders, has died, aged 86.
He inherited 120 acres of London's west end and bred and owned the 1985 Derby winner, Slip Anchor. But the story he loved to dine out on was when, as a young Cambridge student fresh out of Eton, he was driving a new car in Munich when a man walked out in front of him and was knocked down. "He was only shaken up," recalled de Walden. "But had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world." The man was Adolf Hitler.
John Osmael Scott-Ellis became the ninth baron Howard de Walden when he succeeded to the 350-year-old title in 1946, soon after completing second world war service with the Westminster Dragoons, which he ended as instructor at the staff college in Canada. His second-class degree in history and economics equipped him well to take over the family interests, which involved a shipping line, a foundry and newspapers in East Africa (later sold to Lonrho). There was also a bank in Nassau and business interests in Australia.
This was in addition to the slice of London he inherited between Oxford Street and Marylebone Road, the value of which has been put at £200m and 10 years ago was said to be yielding an annual income around of £5m.
De Walden's father had sold off many of his racing and breeding interests in the late 1930s, including the famous Snailwell Stud at Newmarket. But with the rundown racing interests - "just a handful of very bad animals" - his son also inherited his father's apricot racing colours, recommended to the eighth baron by the artist Augustus John because they would show up well against a turf-green background.
De Walden took up racing in the grand manner, going on to own the Plantation Stud in Newmarket (next to his boyhood home at Snailwell), the smaller Templeton Stud at his Berkshire home, and the Thornton Stud in Yorkshire, breeding such equine stars as the 1974 champion hurdle winner, Lanzarote, the top miler, Kris, and Slip Anchor.
He served three three-year stints as senior steward of the Jockey Club (1957, 1964 and 1976) and is largely credited with paving the way to handing over the running of the racing industry to the British Horseracing Board, leaving the club to administer rules and discipline.
Racing was becoming increasingly political by the time of his 70s stint. As he told me: "In the 50s, the whole racing scene was much simpler. We met once a month for just an hour or two. Now I spend, two, sometimes three whole days a week on racing." Then, as now, Jockey Club stewards acted unpaid.
Around this time, de Walden was in tandem at the club with Lord Leverhulme, and the pair were dubbed by racing hacks "the Lords Frightfully-Frightfully and Awfully-Awfully" because of the way they sprinkled their conversation with these adverbs. But de Walden was no upper-class twit. When the NHS came into being, he was quick off the mark, broadening the leasing of his London estate in case the medical men hit hard times. He is reputed to have shrewdly spread as much of his wealth as he could among his daughters and many grandchildren to ease tax demands after his death.
Despite the running of racing becoming more arduous, de Walden never lost sight that it is meant to be fun. After one press conference setting out the club's aims in answer to the pressure groups, he brought some intense questioning to an end by saying: "Enough of all this, what won the first at Pontefract?"
But notwithstanding the quirky sense of humour he showed in his anecdotal autobiography, Earls Have Peacocks, an overwhelming sadness was apparent at any mention of the death in 1975 of Countess Irene Harrach, his Austrian-born first wife and the mother of his four daughters. In 1978, at pensionable age, he remarried the 25-year-younger Gillian, Lady Mountgarret, who, with his daughters, survives him.
After a lengthy lunch at Newmarket, Graham Rock, the Observer racing correspondent, once asked de Walden what difference it made in life to be born silver-spooned. "It's very nice to be able to fly Concorde to New York to take a gal to dinner," he replied, tongue firmly in cheek. De Walden always did appear completely at ease with his immense wealth and, unusually in the jealous world of the turf, did not appear to have a single enemy.
John Osmael Scott-Ellis, ninth Baron Howard de Walden, landowner and racehorse breeder, born November 27, 1912; died July 10, 1999