John Lytton, 5th Earl of Lytton

John Peter Michael Scawen Lytton, 5th Earl of Lytton (born 7 June 1950), styled Viscount Knebworth from 1951 to 1985, is a British chartered surveyor, hereditary peer and member of the House of Lords.

Background and education The elder son of Noel Lytton, 4th Earl of Lytton, by his wife Clarissa Mary née Palmer, he is a descendant of the poet and adventurer Lord Byron (born 1788) via his daughter Ada Lovelace (born 1815), who was arguably the world's first computer programmer. Her daughter Anne (born 1837) married the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; their daughter Judith Blunt-Lytton was the grandmother of the 4th Earl and thus the great-grandmother of the 5th and present earl. He is also patrilineally descended from Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Educated at Downside School, Lytton read estate management at the University of Reading, graduating as BSc in 1972.

Career After spending thirteen years at the Inland Revenue Valuation Office and some additional years with surveying firms Permutt Brown & Co. and Cubitt & West, he set up the practice of John Lytton & Co., Chartered Surveyors, in January 1988. Succeeding his father in the earldom in 1985, he was deprived of a seat in the House of Lords upon the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999. However, on 11 May 2011 Lord Lytton won a hereditary peer by-election being reintroduced to the Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher.

Lord Lytton has taken his Byronic ancestry to heart and contributes to the Newstead Byron Society Review, as well as speaking before the Byron Society about his family history. He was elected President of the Newstead Abbey Byron Society in 1988.

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS) in 1987 and Hon. FBEng in 1997, Lord Lytton is a Patron of the Chartered Association of Building Engineers. Since 2011, he serves as a Deputy Lieutenant for West Sussex.

Family He married, on 7 June 1980, Ursula Alexandra Komoly, a daughter of Anton Komoly of Vienna, Austria; the Earl and Countess of Lytton have three children: His cousins on the Cobbold side maintain the ancestral estate, Knebworth House, in Hertfordshire.