BENSON, David Holford 1938-2023
Richard R
He was s of Lt-Col Sir Reginald (Rex) Lindsay BENSON DSO MVO MC 1889-1968 (3xgt gs of 5th Earl of BALCARRES 1691-1768 (gf of the 7th Earl of BALCARRES & 24th Earl of CRAWFORD 1783-1869), as also 5xgt gs of 2nd Earl of LOUDOUN d 1684, etc) and Leslie 1907-81 d of Albert Volney FOSTER 1877-1950 of Illinois, and Grace Isabelle LESLIE 1886-1908. He m 17 Oct 1964 Lady Elizabeth Mary CHARTERIS b 1941 d of the 12th Earl of WEMYSS & [8th] MARCH 1912-2008 and Mavis Lynette Gordon 1911-88 d of Edwin Edward MURRAY 1879-1959 and Grace Bradbury EMSLIE 1884-1975, and had a son and two daus.
Richard R
Obit in the Times of 7 Nov 2023:
David Benson obituary
Self-effacing merchant banker who was at the heart of privatisations in the Eighties but was often happier in front of an easel
… vice-chairman of the family bank, Kleinwort Benson (KB)…. More personally traumatic was the sale of KB in 1995 to the German Dresdner Bank. It gave the bank a global reach that it had not had before, but inevitably brought to an end a long family history, which reached back to its foundations in the 18th century when the Bensons, a Quaker family of sheep farmers in the Lake District, expanded their interests and set up a successful shipping line in Liverpool…
…David Holford Benson was the younger son of glamorous parents — Sir Rex Benson, an officer with the Queens Lancers, who had served in the First World War, winning an MC and DSO, and his wife Leslie, née Foster, who had previously been married to Condé Nast, the magazine tycoon. Gassed and wounded in 1916, Rex Benson came home to recover, and was then appointed liaison officer with Marshal Pétain; unofficially he was working for the secret services and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’honneur. Later he became chief of the British Mission at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and in 1941 was sent to Washington to become military attaché at the British embassy…
…Benson, his elder brother Robin and his half-sister Leslie — daughter of Condé Nast — spent their early childhood in Washington, from where they returned to Britain in wartime on a battleship, Leslie being the only female on board. Brought up thereafter in Sussex, Benson was sent to Ludgrove prep school, which he disliked, then Eton, where he studied art under Wilfrid Blunt — brother of the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt — who described him as “the charming amateur painter par excellence” and considered him talented enough to be awarded a retrospective exhibition at the school…
…In 1964 he married Elizabeth Charteris, daughter of the Earl of Wemyss, whose family owned land in southern Scotland, in which he took a close interest. This encouraged a lifelong enthusiasm for country sports, in which he excelled. They had three children, Matthew, a company director, Henrietta, a landscape architect, and Kate, an events organiser. His and Elizabeth’s 59-year marriage was a happy one…
…At their homes in Sussex and East Lothian, and at Bussento, the house on the Amalfi coast in Italy built by Benson’s parents in the 1930s, he and Elizabeth extended their hospitality to a wide range of friends. Throughout a lifetime in the City, painting remained his greatest enthusiasm. His early pieces consisted mainly of landscapes, but later included detailed studies of the many cities in which he worked. He exhibited widely, the proceeds of any sale going always to charity. At Sotheby’s one expert commented that he had achieved “the standards of the professional from the hands of an amateur”. Benson once said he was prouder of being made an honorary member of the Royal Watercolour Society than he was of his many City achievements.
David Benson, merchant banker, was born on February 26, 1938. He died of cancer on October 17, 2023, aged 85
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-benson-obituary-8r5kpfcf2