Charles Henry Lyell

Major Charles Henry Lyell (18 May 1875 – 18 October 1918) was a British politician and Liberal Member of Parliament who died in the First World War.

Education and private life

Lyell was born in 1875, the only son of Leonard Lyell, 1st Baron Lyell, and was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. Whilst at Oxford he became a Freemason in the Apollo University Lodge, a Masonic lodge for students and former students of the university.

He married Rosalind Margaret Watney on 18 May 1911 at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire. They had one son, Charles Anthony Lyell (later 2nd Baron Lyell) and one daughter, Margaret Laetitia. He was elected for Edinburgh South at a by-election in April, and won re-election in the December general election. He was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, in February 1911, and stood down from the seat in May 1917. Lyell is commemorated on Panel 1 of the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall, one of 22 MPs that died during the First World War to be named on that memorial. A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes a short biographical account of the life and death of Lyell.