Edward Chichester, 6th Marquess of Donegall

Edward Arthur Donald St George Hamilton Chichester, 6th Marquess of Donegall (7 October 1903 – 24 May 1975), was a British peer and journalist. He succeeded to the marquessate on the death of his father in 1904, at the age of seven months. His other titles included Baron Fisherwick, which gave him a seat in the House of Lords. He was also the Hereditary Lord High Admiral of Lough Neagh.

Biography The son of the elderly George Chichester, 5th Marquess of Donegall (1822–1904), Chichester was educated at the École nouvelle de la Suisse romande, Eton, and Christ Church, Oxford, and took up a career in journalism. For many years he wrote a column in the Sunday Dispatch under the title "Almost in Confidence". He made regular contributions to the Sunday News and Sunday Graphic, and also held a staff position on the Daily Sketch. (At a Hollywood party given for Graham and the Marquess by the writer, Robert Benchley, Graham first set eyes on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, with whom she shortly after began a romance that lasted until Fitzgerald's death in 1940. )

In 1943 he married Gladys Jean Combe, younger daughter of Captain Christian Combe, of the Royal Horse Guards, and his wife Lady Jane, daughter of George Conyngham, 3rd Marquess Conyngham. She was a descendant of the politician and brewer (of Combe Delafield and Co., later Watney Combe & Reid) Harvey Christian Combe, Lord Mayor of London from 1799 to 1800. Donegall parted from his wife after 10 years, and in 1962 moved to Switzerland. In 1968 the Marquess was granted a divorce under Swiss law and in that same year he married Maureen McKenzie (née Scholfield), daughter of Major Geoffrey C. Scholfield of Birkdale, Lancashire, and former wife of Douglas McKenzie, whom she had married in 1947.

Donegall resigned as president of the National Canine Defence League in 1957. He had been connected with the League for more than thirty years.

Death

He died in Switzerland on 24 May 1975 at the age of 71. His second wife and widow died in 1999.

At the time of his death, the Marquess was working on his autobiography, which he planned to call Almost in Confidence, after the newspaper column he had run. It was not ready for publication before he died.