HERBERT, Robin Arthur Elidyr CBE 1934-2024

[Richard R]

From the Telegraph of 15 Jan 2024: HERBERT Robin Arthur Elidyr CBE VMH died peacefully in his sleep at home on 12th January 2024. A Service of Thanksgiving to be held at Our Lady & St Michael's RC Church, Abergavenny on Monday 22nd January at 2 p.m. At Robin's request there will be no memorial service…

He was s of Lt-Col Sir John Arthur HERBERT GCIE 1895-1943 scion of that gentry family of Upper Helmsley &c and Lady Mary Theresa FOX-STRANGEWAYS 1903-48 d of 6^th Earl of ILCHESTER GBE 1874-1959 and Lady Helen Mary Theresa VANE-TEMPEST-STEWART 1876-1956 d of 6^th Marquess of LONDONDERRY 1852-1915 and his w a dau of 19^th Earl of SHREWSBURY & WATERFORD 1830-77. He m 1^st 1960 (div 1988) Margaret Griswold d of Hon. Geoffrey Whitney LEWIS 1910-92 (former US Ambassador & NATO delegate) and Elizabeth Merrill LOCKE 1914-2009 of Maple Juice Cove, Maine, and had 2 sons and 2 daus. He m 2^nd 1988 Philippa KING. Issue from his 1^st m:

1. Ben(jamin) Cadoc b 1963, m 2000 reg Q4 London Sara F d of Freddie NEWTON of Myton-on-Swale, N Yorks, and had issue

1.1 Milo Alfred Elidyr b 11 March 2001 (Times 17 March)

1.2 Ivor Arthur Robin b 26 Oct 2005 (Times 1 Nov)

1.1 Lucy Fflorens b 15 May 2003 (Times 21 May)

2. Richard Arthur Ifor b 1969

1. (Helen) Elizabeth b 1962, m 1987 reg Q4 Gwent M. Ross s of Lt-Col Graham MURRAY of Little Ness, Shropshire

2. Susannah Mary b 1966, m 9 Oct 1999 (Times 16 Oct) Jonathan D s of Roger FORD of Woolpit, Suffolk, and had issue

2.1 Matilda Rose FORD b 14 Jan 2001 (Times 23 Jan)

2.2 Eliza Hope FORD b 2004 reg Q1 Hammersmith

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John JONES, of Llanarth Court (1790-1848); m.11 Sep 1817 Lady Harriet Plunkett (d.22 March 1871)
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John Arthur Edward JONES later HERBERT, of Llanarth Court and Treowen (1818-1895); m.12 Nov 1846 Hon. Augusta Charlotte Elizabeth Hall (d.3 Nov 1912), dau of 1st and last Baron Llanover
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1.Sir Ivor John Caradoc HERBERT, 1st and last Bt, and 1st and last Baron Treowen (1851-1933)

2.Sir Arthur James HERBERT, of Llanover (1855-1921); m.14 Dec 1892 Helen Louise, dau of William Gammell, of Rhode Island, USA
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Sir John Arthur, of Llanover (19 Dec 1895-11 Dec 1943); m.11 June 1924 Lady Mary Theresa Fox-Strangways (d.26 Jan 1948), dau of 6th Earl of Ilchester and granddaughter of 6th Marquess of Londonderry
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Robin Arthur Elidyr, of Llanover (5 Mar 1934-12 Jan 2024); m.25 June 1960 Margaret Griswold, daughter of
Geoffrey Whitney Lewis, US Delegate NATO

[Richard R]

Obit in the Times of 1 Feb 2024:

E X T R A C T

Robin Herbert obituary

Towering figure in the worlds of banking and conservation who transformed the fortunes of the Royal Horticultural Society

…Robin Arthur Elidyr Herbert was born in London in 1934. At first glance, he was an unlikely revolutionary: his father, Sir John Herbert, the Conservative MP for Monmouth, was governor of Bengal from 1939, dying at the height of the Bengal Famine in Calcutta in 1943; his mother, Lady Mary Herbert, was one of Princess Elizabeth’s ladies of the bedchamber. Early holidays were spent at Balmoral, where rainy-day entertainment included games of Hunt the Slipper with Princess Margaret.

Herbert’s memories of wartime India included playing marbles with the glass eye of General Wavell, who liked to take tea with Lady Mary at Government House in Calcutta. Young Robin’s nursery was at the far end of this imperial residence, once described by George Curzon, as Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, as “the finest Government House occupied by the representative of any sovereign or government in the world”. There were advantages to being the governor’s son: he alone was allowed to race down corridors on a tricycle and when he visited the Mint in Calcutta, he recalled: “They struck a special medal for me.” As Japanese bombs exploded on the compound’s tennis courts, he bred rabbits for the war effort — no one told him they would be eaten.

On his mother’s death in 1948, as a gangling 13-year-old schoolboy, Herbert was left in the care of his uncle, John Fox-Strangways, a bon vivant who won notoriety for kicking Nye Bevan down the steps of White’s Club in St James’s, London. Fortunately there were alternative role models, including his godfather, the plantsman Bobby Jenkinson, who taught his godson to love the gardens the boy had inherited, along with 3,500 heavily indebted acres at Llanover, near Abergavenny in the Black Mountains.

His Herbert grandmother, née Helen Gammell, a forceful character from a leading Rhode Island family, encouraged him to round off his education — Eton, Royal Horseguards, a philosophy, politics and economics degree at Oxford — by studying in the US. His stint at Harvard Business School gave him an appetite for change and an introduction to Margaret Lewis, an American diplomat’s daughter.

After marriage in Paris in 1960, they settled in the main house on the family’s Llanover estate to raise four children. His great-great-grandmother Lady Llanover had turned the place into a centre for Welsh culture a century earlier,

…From 1987 he handed the running of the Llanover estate over to his elder daughter, Elizabeth Murray, a regenerative farmer and gardener. Ben Herbert, his elder son, runs the Llanarth estate. His younger daughter, Susannah, became a journalist, and his younger son Richard is a landscape architect in New York.

In 1988, after divorce, he married Philippa Hooper (née King), with whom he created from scratch an impressive garden 800ft above sea level at their new home in Llanbedr, Powys…

Robin Herbert CBE, VMH, horticulturist, was born on March 5, 1934. He died on January 12, 2024, aged 89

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/robin-herbert-obituary-mwjgbqp96