George Montagu, 8th Duke of Manchester

George Victor Drogo "Kim" Montagu, 8th Duke of Manchester (17 June 1853 – 18 August 1892), styled Lord Kimbolton from 1853 to 1855 and Viscount Mandeville from 1855 to 1890, was a British peer and Member of Parliament.

Background Montagu was the eldest of the five children of William Drogo Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester, and Countess Louise von Alten. He was educated at Eton.

Political and military career

Aged 18 he became an officer in the part-time Militia, commissioned on 18 December 1871 as a Lieutenant in the Huntingdonshire Rifles, of which his father was second-in-command. By 1877 he was a captain and in 1880 he transferred to the Armagh Light Infantry militia (later the 3rd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers).

During the Anglo-Zulu War (1879) he was appointed aide de camp to Sir Garnet Wolseley and according to a report in the Newsletter on one occasion "he was assegaied by a Zulu running amok and shot him".

In 1877 Montagu was elected to the House of Commons for Huntingdonshire, a seat he held until 1880. the daughter of a wealthy Cuban plantation owner and a renowned beauty. Her older brother was New York banker Fernando Yznaga. It was widely accepted that he had married her for her $6 million dowry and she him for his titles. One of Consuelo Yznaga's closest friends, Edith Wharton, was said to have incorporated certain aspects of her friend's marriage in her unfinished novel, The Buccaneers. Their union produced a son and twin daughters:

Personal life and death Prior to his marriage, Mandeville had been considered an inebriate, and was shunned by respectable society. His circle of closest friends in Ireland included Edward Russell, 24th Baron de Clifford; Derrick Westenra, 5th Baron Rossmore and Francis Needham, 3rd Earl of Kilmorey. and the couple was living apart in London. aged only 39, and was succeeded in his titles by his son William. He was buried at Ballymore Parish Church, located close to Tandragee Castle.