Esmond Romilly
Esmond Romilly | |
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Pilot Officer (United Kingdom) Air Observer (Canada) | |
Unit | No. 58 Squadron RAF (United Kingdom/Canada)
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Esmond Marcus David Romilly (10 June 1918 – 30 November 1941) was a
Born into an aristocratic family – he was a nephew of Clementine Churchill – he emerged in the 1930s as a precocious rebel against his background, openly espousing communist views at the age of fifteen. He ran away from Wellington College, and campaigned vociferously against the British public school system, by publishing a critical left wing magazine, Out of Bounds: Public Schools' Journal Against Fascism, Militarism, and Reaction, and (jointly with his brother) a memoir analysing his school experiences. At the age of eighteen, he joined the International Brigades and fought on the Madrid front during the Spanish Civil War, of which he wrote and published a vivid account.
Before departing for Spain, Romilly had largely abandoned communism (he never formally joined the party) in favour of democratic socialism. Unable to settle in London, he and his wife relocated to America in 1939. When the Second World War broke out Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and began training as a pilot, but was discharged on medical grounds. He re-enlisted and retrained as an observer. Posted back to England, he lost his life when his plane failed to return from a bombing raid in November 1941.
Family
Esmond Romily's maternal grandfather was Sir
Nellie Hozier grew up in the family's various homes in Seaford on the English south coast, in Dieppe in France, and finally in Berkhamsted where she attended the Girls' High School with her elder sister Clementine.[4] In September 1908, she acted as a bridesmaid at Clementine's wedding to Winston Churchill.[5] At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Nellie volunteered as a nursing auxiliary in Belgium and was briefly a prisoner of war before repatriation at the end of the year.[6] Back in England, she met an officer in the Scots Guards, Lieutenant-Colonel Bertram Henry Samuel Romilly, who had been seriously wounded while fighting in France.[7] Romilly was from a distinguished landowning family with a long tradition of public service.[8] The couple married in December 1915; their elder son Giles Samuel Bertram Romilly was born on 19 September 1916. The second son, Esmond, followed on 10 June 1918.[2][9][n 1]
Early life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Ebury_Restaurant_Pimlico_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1305571.jpg/220px-Ebury_Restaurant_Pimlico_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1305571.jpg)
Esmond was born at No. 15 Pimlico Road, in a busy part of London close to Victoria Station.[9] It was a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle in which Nellie, rather than Colonel Romilly was the principal influence.[2][n 2] Esmond followed his elder brother to school, first at Gibbs's Day School in nearby Sloane Street and then, from 1927, as a boarder at Newlands Preparatory School at Seaford.[12] Holidays were divided between the family's property in Dieppe and the Churchill cousins' home at Chartwell, and the Romilly estates at Huntington Park in Herefordshire.[13]
Just before his ninth birthday, Esmond began at Newlands in the May 1927. It was a small school, with some forty-odd boys; Giles's later account, in which he disguises the school as "Seacliffe" and alters the names of the main personnel, depicts an easygoing and undemanding establishment run by an elderly and by now largely ineffective headmaster.[12] Matters changed when in 1930 the headmaster and others of the old guard finally retired and were replaced by more vigorous and purposeful successors.[14][15] By his own account, Esmond's academic prowess placed him at the top of the school, although in terms of behaviour he was one of the very worst.[14] Nevertheless, by the time he left Newlands in 1932 he had managed to register a number of personal successes: Head Boy, Patrol Leader of the Otters, captain of cricket and Rugby football, winner of cups for boxing and tennis, and a prize for History.[16]
Wellington
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Wellington_College_South_Front.jpg/220px-Wellington_College_South_Front.jpg)
The choice of Wellington as a public school was evidently the boys' own. Giles has revealed that he and Esmond had been entered for Eton College at an early age, and were expected to go there. However, when the time came Giles pleaded to be allowed to go to Wellington instead: "[It] was associated with soldiers and we were both very military".[17] Their wishes were granted; Giles began at Wellington in January 1930,[18] and Esmond followed in September 1931.[19]
Reluctant conformist
Wellington College had been founded by national subscription as a memorial to the first Duke, who had died in 1852. It had opened in 1859, primarily as a military orphanage for the sons of deceased officers, but by the 1920s had evolved into a public school of a highly reactionary character.[20] T. C. Worsley, who taught there in the early 1930s, described it as "philistine to a degree almost unimaginable in a great school", and "[I]n every possible way ... thirty, forty, fifty years behind the times".[21] Its style was of absolute conformity, based on what Kevin Ingram, Esmond's biographer, calls a "doctrine of suppression"; a tight curriculum that accounted for every moment of the boys' time, and a "dormitory" system that placed boys in small exclusive units that kept them apart from the rest of the school in every activity outside the classroom.[22] Esmond would later write of his "hatred" at seeing "the same faces opposite one every day ... always there was the same monotonous conversation".[23]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Oswald_mosley_MP.jpg/170px-Oswald_mosley_MP.jpg)
In her biographical study, Meredith Whitford describes the adolescent Esmond as "conceited, bumptious, argumentative, spoilt, ambitious for authority, a grubby, unhandy child, extroverted and lazy and too intelligent for his surroundings".
Rebel
When, in the summer of 1932, Giles announced his conversion to Bolshevism, Esmond records his family's shocked reaction (and "Uncle Winston"'s considerable amusement), but at the time, he took no specific steps to embrace communism as a personal creed.[29] That followed some nine months later, during the 1933 Easter holidays spent as usual in Dieppe. Before leaving for France, Esmond had acquired a copy of the Daily Worker, and had arranged for further copies to be delivered to Dieppe. Through this clandestine reading, Esmond made contact with groups of communists in London, and arranged to meet them on his return to England.[30] The meetings duly took place, and Esmond was impressed by them, although his ideas were far from clearly formed: "When I went back to Wellington for the summer term, I took with me an odd collection of ideas".[31] Among other things, like others at the time he tended to confuse communism with pacifism. However, he was determined to convert "at least 20 Wellingtonians" to the new creed.[31]
During the following months Esmond engaged in various acts of somewhat incoherent rebellion. He joined a "peace correspondence" group, until it was clear that his young, female correspondent was more interested in a sexual than a political relationship.[32] His first concrete act against the Wellington establishment came on his 15th birthday, 10 June 1933, when he refused to sign up for the Officers Training Corps, an action which to his disappointment incurred only mild disapproval and which, after consultation with his parents was allowed to stand.[33] He had written a fiery letter to a left-wing student magazine, the Student Vanguard, in which he asserted that "Every boy is compelled to join the Corps at the age of fifteen and must stay there until he leaves", a patently untrue statement for which he was required to provide a written apology.[34][35]
Towards the end of the 1933 summer term, Esmond took advantage of a school holiday to visit the Parton Street bookshop in West London, where he had arranged to meet one of his communist correspondents. The Parton Street premises, part bookshop, part circulating library, partly a centre for radical intellectuals and poets, was run on a philanthropic basis by David Archer, a Cambridge graduate and former Wellingtonian with whom Esmond struck an immediate rapport.[36][37] Among the habitués were the poets John Cornford, Stephen Spender and David Gascoyne, the budding actor Alec Guinness, and the soldier-diplomat and writer T.E. Lawrence. The Parton Street Press was Dylan Thomas's first publisher.[38][n 3] Whatever the outcome of the arranged meeting, Esmond had, as Ingram remarks, found a new spiritual home in which to revive his flagging spirits. His mood was further improved at the start of the summer vacation when he attended a communist demonstration at Deptford.[40]
Returning to Wellington for the 1933 autumn term, Esmond became the leader of a small group of followers, none of whom he found particularly inspiring.[41] On 15 October, at the Wellington Debating Society, he proposed the motion that "In the opinion of this house the political freedom of women is a sign of a civilized society". Giles led for the opposition, and the motion was defeated by 29 votes to 9.[42] A month later he was involved in perhaps his most direct act of rebellion against the College ethos, when in advance of the Armistice Day commemorations he distributed a consignment of badges from the Anti-War Movement, to be worn in addition to the venerated poppy. From the same organisation he acquired anti-war leaflets which he and a confederate inserted into the hymn-books from which the hymn O Valiant Hearts would be sung at the Armistice service.[43][n 4] Esmond was again forced to apologise, this time under direct threat of expulsion, and to provide an undertaking that nothing similar would occur in the future.[43][45]
Although often at odds with each other, the Romilly brothers were capable of working together. In January 1934, after Esmond had addressed a meeting of the Federation of Student Societies (a university-based Marxist organisation that co-ordinated left-wing student activities),[46] the brothers decided to launch a new magazine, Out of Bounds ("Against Reaction in Public Schools").[2] A manifesto was prepared and circulated among interested parties: the first issue would be in March 1934, it would appear twice termly (cost one shilling); among the problems the first issue would discuss was "the positive and blatant use of the public schools as a weapon in the cause of reaction".[47] Although these initial steps were carried out without undue publicity, by the end of January the story had broken in the right-wing press, giving rise to headlines such as "Red Menace in Public Schools" and "Officer's Son Sponsors Extremist Journal".[48] The headmaster of Wellington, F.B. Malim, who had first given a provisional consent to the project, now demanded that the brothers abandon their activities.[49] Esmond's solution was simple; rather than give up the project he would run away from the school.[2]
Out of Bounds
The fugitive Romilly found his way to Parton Street and set up his headquarters there, amid considerable press interest and speculation: "Mr Churchill's Nephew Vanishes" was a typical headline.
The first issue was published on 25 March 1934. Romilly had been assiduous in developing a distribution network "in every cloister and dormitory he could reach",[37] and had acquired a wide selection of contributions, so that the magazine ran to 35 pages. His own contributions included a fiery editorial, an article on the arms race and a rebuttal of a defence of fascism supplied from Oundle School. There were poems, some literary criticism, a letters page, an article on conditions in girls' schools, and some humorous send-ups of public school life. Despite the relatively moderate overall tone, the Daily Mail denounced the magazine as a "Reds' New Attack" and quoted from the editorial: "We shall infuriate every schoolmaster over 30 (and some under) throughout England".[53]
On 14 April the organisation of Out of Bounds was formalised when a meeting of some 16 delegates from a range of schools appointed a permanent editorial board under Romilly's chairmanship.
Romilly spent the summer and autumn months quietly, in London, subsisting on a small allowance from his father.[64] He had largely lost interest in the magazine, although he continued to contribute; the third issue appeared in November without creating a stir, much of it consisting of what Ingram calls tame repetition.[65] He began a new project, with his brother Giles, in the form of a book in which the pair recounted and analysed their experiences of school.[66] Much of the 1934–35 winter was spent by Romilly in writing his part of the combined work, which Hamish Hamilton agreed to publish.[67] This period of responsible endeavour was interrupted in late December 1934 by a drunken incident which resulted in Romilly's arrest and detention in a remand home for several weeks, from which he was eventually released on a year's probation.[68][69]
The book Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles Romilly and Esmond Romilly was published in June 1935, to a generally favourable reception, and sold well enough to run to a second edition. Raymond Mortimer in the New Statesman found the book "candid and surprisingly fair"; even the Daily Mail conceded that the young authors had literary ability.[70] The Observer's books critic remarked that the book might tell the true story,[71] rather than the exaggerated accounts evident from the magazine – which the brothers opportunistically brought out in a fourth and final edition to coincide with the book's publication. The centrepiece of this last issue was a frank article on masturbation, supposedly contributed by a doctor.[72]
Interlude
Romilly used his share of the publisher's advance to open a public schools news agency, "Educational News and Features", but the venture soon collapsed.[73][74] He then took a job selling silk stockings.[75] His political convictions had meanwhile softened, and he joined the Labour Party.[76] By December 1935 he was selling advertising space on commission,[77] and in March 1936 he took a full-time job as advertising manager of World Film News.[78][79]
Spain
The
From Valencia, Romilly and other volunteers were entrained to Albacete, the gathering point where the International Brigades were being organised. For his first few days at the base, Romilly was aligned with a group of Russian emigrés, but within a few days, further shipments from the Maro Caspio had brought a number of English volunteers to the camp. Romilly became part of the group under the leadership of Lorrimer Birch, a Cambridge-educated scientist who, in Romilly's later assessment showed true qualities of leadership and organisation: "a communist first of all, but determined that his communism shouldn't interfere with his fairness of judgement".[85]
On 6 November, news reached Albacete that the rebel Nationalist forces had begun their assault on Madrid. Some accounts implied that the capital was on the verge of falling to the rebels. The English group were attached to the Thaelmann Battalion of the XII Brigade, which on 10 November moved to Chinchón, about 50 kilometres south-east of the capital. Two days later Romilly's unit was sent to defend the Madrid-Valencia highway near Vaciamadrid, close to the outskirts of the city. During the next few days Romilly had his first experience under fire in an abortive attack on a supposed rebel-held fortress at Cerro de los Angeles. The action was inconclusive, and on 15 November, the unit returned to Chinchón.[86]
After a brief rest, the XII Brigade was ordered to the University City of Madrid, the city's university campus, which had fallen into rebel hands. For most of the next few weeks, Romilly and the English group were involved in heavy fighting on the edges of the campus, much of it concentrated around a farm complex known as the White House. The buildings passed several times between Republican and Nationalist forces.[87] During a brief rest period in Chinchón, the group was visited by English journalists, who reported Romilly's presence, his family's first news of his whereabouts since his departure in October.[88]
In mid-December, Romilly's unit was sent to Boadilla del Monte, where a strong rebel offensive was under way.[89] In the ensuing battle, nearly all of Romilly's British companions, including Birch, were killed. Romilly survived the fighting, but contracted dysentery and was invalided back to England early in January 1937.[90][91]
Elopement
At the end of January 1937, while he was recuperating from his Spanish experiences at the home of his distant cousin Dorothy Althusen (widow of the Conservative MP
As a cover story to explain her departure, Mitford invented an invitation to visit friends in Austria. The pair departed from England on 8 February.[97] They reached Bayonne, on the French-Spanish border, and after a tense wait for Mitford's visa, they took a cargo boat to Bilbao.[98]
By then, their families had discovered the subterfuge and were aware of the fugitive couple's whereabouts and of their intention to marry. The families, bitterly opposed to the union, hoped to avoid press attention, but Romilly opportunistically exploited press interest by selling his story through an intermediary. Headlines appeared in the Daily Express on 1 March 1937 announcing, "Peer's Daughter Elopes to Spain".
London
The couple remained in Bayonne since Romilly hoped to return to Spain to report on the war. Thwarted by his failure to obtain a visa, he worked on Boadilla, an account of his experiences fighting with the English brigades. He secured a publisher's advance of £50, which he rapidly lost through an unwise gambling scheme.[103] Mitford was now several months pregnant, and they decided to return to London to a flat in Rotherhithe in the East End that a friend had made available. The ground floor of the building operated as a casino, and Romilly worked there as a croupier before landing a more regular job as a copywriter with the advertising firm Graham & Gillies.[2][104]
Boadilla was published in the autumn of 1937, but initial sales were poor. In December, a baby daughter named Julia Decca was born but failed to survive a measles epidemic that broke out in the spring of 1938. The baby died on 28 May.[105] The stricken couple abandoned their London life and fled to Corsica, where they spent the summer in a cheap hotel and eked out their savings.[106] In September, they returned to London, to a room in the Marble Arch area, but could not settle into a regular life.[107] The opportunity to escape came in the form of an windfall from a Mitford trust fund, which on Mitford's twenty-first birthday provided a sum of £100: enough, they decided, to purchase cheap tickets for America with some to spare.[108] On 18 February 1939, after throwing a farewell party for their friends, the pair left England for good, aboard the SS Aurania, their destination being New York.[109]
America, war and disappearance
In New York, the Romillys settled in a small
Romilly departed for Canada to begin training, first at Toronto and later at Regina, Saskatchewan,[116] while Mitford remained in Washington, pregnant with her second child (a daughter, Constancia, was born on 9 February 1941).[117] Meanwhile, Romilly's training did not run smoothly. In November 1940 he was disqualified from aircrew duties because of a previously-undetected radical mastoidectomy and discharged from the RCAF. However, he obtained an immediate reinstatement to train as an air observer at Malton, Ontario.[118] In the summer of 1941, on the completion of his training, he was posted to England, where he was attached to No. 58 Squadron RAF as a navigator with the rank of pilot officer. On 30 November 1941, while participating in a raid on Hamburg, Romilly's aircraft failed to return and was lost over the North Sea with all on board.[2] Air-sea rescue operations begun out the following morning could find no trace of the craft or any survivors, and on 3 December, the search was abandoned.[119] Mitford was notified by telegram on 1 December.[120]
See also
Notes
- ^ Esmond Romilly bore a physical resemblance to his uncle-by-marriage, Winston Churchill, a fact which gave rise to family rumours that Churchill, rather than Romilly, was Esmond's natural father, but there are no substantial grounds to support this.[10]
- ^ Under the pseudonym "Anna Gerstein", Nellie published an autobiographical novel depicting family life in Pimlico Road.[11]
- ^ Archer eventually introduced Esmond to many of these figures. Dylan Thomas's girlfriend Pamela Hansford Johnson remarked that the 20-year-old poet "looked more like a runaway schoolboy than Esmond Romilly, who really was one".[39]
- ^ Ingram wrongly attributes the hymn to Rudyard Kipling, but it was written by Sir John Arkwright MP and set to music by Dr Charles Harris.[44]
- ^ Philip Toynbee had run away from Rugby School and found his way to Parton Street, where he met Romilly and was instantly smitten: "In 1934 Esmond was a terrifying figure. He was dirty and ill-dressed, immensely strong for his age and size, his flat face gave the impression of being deeply scarred, and his eyes flared and smouldered as he talked".[56]
- ^ Romilly recorded that the second Out of Bounds came in for more criticism and abuse than the first, mainly because of a couple of "outspoken" contributions on the subject of sex in schools, which accumulated much more wrath than the political content of the magazine.[61]
- ^ The Daily Express mixed the sisters up and named Deborah as the eloping Mitford. Deborah sued for libel and settled out of court for £1,000 damages.[99]
References
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 27.
- ^ required.)
- ^ Lovell 2002, pp. 25–26.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 28–30.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 30.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 30–32.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 4.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 34–39.
- ^ a b Ingram 1985, p. 8.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 3, 6–7.
- ^ a b Ingram 1985, p. 20.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 45.
- ^ a b Whitford 2014, p. 44.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 25.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 29.
- ^ Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 27.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 24.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 30.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 34.
- ^ Worsley 1985, p. 63.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 32–33.
- ^ Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 114.
- ^ a b Whitford 2014, p. 57.
- ^ Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 108.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 41.
- ^ Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 110.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 39.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 42.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 44–45.
- ^ a b Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 113.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 46.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 46–47.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 47–48.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 60.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 50–52.
- ^ a b c Fraser 2012, p. 70.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 61.
- ^ Fraser 2012, p. 71.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 52.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 54.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 55.
- ^ a b Ingram 1985, pp. 57–58.
- ^ "Hereford and Worcester: World War I". BBC. 13 November 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 63.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 61.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 64.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 64.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 65–66.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 66.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 66–67.
- ^ "Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.K. Pound Amount, 1270 to Present". Measuringworth. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 77–78.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 79.
- ProQuest 483643103. (subscription required)
- ^ Toynbee 1954, p. 18.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 85–86.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 84–85.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 86.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 90–91.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 91.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 87–88.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 87.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 89.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 94.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 102.
- ^ Romilly and Romilly, 2015, p. 7.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 97–101.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 95–96.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 106.
- ProQuest 481516779. (subscription required)
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 107.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 98.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 108–10.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 111–12.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 96.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 112.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 112–16.
- ^ Whitford 2014, pp. 99–100.
- ^ This episode in his life is recorded in his memoir Boadilla, Hamish Hamilton, 1937; republished Macdonald, 1972; republished The Clapton Press, 2018.
- ^ Romilly 1937, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 102.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 119–21.
- ^ Romilly 1937, p. 17.
- ^ Romilly 1937, p. 43.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 127–32.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 133–37.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 136.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 141.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 142–45.
- ^ Romilly 1937, pp. 194–95.
- ^ Lovell 2002, p. 220.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/60652. Retrieved 2 December 2018. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 159.
- ^ Lovell 2002, p. 218.
- ^ Lovell 2002, p. 221.
- ^ Lovell 2002, pp. 222–23.
- ^ Lovell 2002, p. 227.
- ^ Lovell 2002, p. 320.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 156–57.
- ^ Lovell 2002, pp. 236–37.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 164.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 165–67.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 167–68.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 173–75.
- ^ Mitford 1989, p. 149.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 177–78.
- ^ Mitford 1989, pp. 155–56.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 182.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 184.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 187–88.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 236.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 200–01.
- ^ Mitford 1989, p. 184.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 204–05.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 208–11.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 281.
- ^ Ingram 1985, pp. 213–16.
- ^ Ingram 1985, p. 233.
- ^ Whitford 2014, p. 299.
Sources
- Fraser, Robert (2012). Night Thoughts: The Surreal Life of the Poet David Gascoyne. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955814-8.
- Ingram, Kevin (1985). Rebel: The Short Life of Esmond Romilly. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78707-1.
- Lovell, Mary (2002). The Mitford Girls. London: Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349115-05-4.
- Mitford, Jessica (1989). Hons and Rebels. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 978-0-575045-33-0.
- Romilly, Giles; Romilly, Esmond (2015). Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles Romilly and Esmond Romilly. London: Umbria Press. ISBN 978-1-910074-06-0.
- Romilly, Esmond (1937). Boadilla. London: Hamish Hamilton; Republished (2018), London: ISBN 978-1-9996543-0-6.
- Seldon, Anthony; Walsh, David (2013). Public Schools and The Great War. London: Pen and Sword. p. 216. ISBN 978-1-78159-308-0.
- OCLC 463281712.
- Whitford, Meredith (2014). Churchill's Rebels: Jessica Mitford and Esmond Romilly. London: Umbria Press. ISBN 978-1-910074-01-5.
- ISBN 0-7012-0590-3.
External links
- Account of marriage through to death
- Jessica Mitford's account of his death, conveyed to her by Winston Churchill
- Mini-biography of Esmond Romilly
- Photographic portrait of Esmond and Giles Romilly, at the National Gallery
[[Category:People educated at Bedales School)