Mark Bence-Jones

Mark Adayre Bence-Jones (29 May 1930 – 12 April 2010) was a London-born writer, noted mainly for his books on Irish architecture, the British aristocracy and the British Raj. He regarded himself as being both Irish and English, seeing no contradiction in these statements of nationality.

Life and works Early life Bence-Jones was the son of Colonel Philip Reginald Bence-Jones, who was the head of an engineering school in Lahore, India. His mother was half-French and half-English, and had been brought up in Alexandria, Egypt. but most of his childhood was spent in India, and plans for his education in England were curtailed by the outbreak of World War II.

He also tried his hand at writing novels: three comedies of upper-class life in Rome, London and Ireland. granddaughter of the Conservative politician Ernest George Pretyman and author of a collection of poems: Ostrich Creek, published in 1999. They had a son and two daughters.

Bence-Jones was a devout Catholic, serving, at one time, as Chancellor of the Irish Association of the Knights of Malta (see Sovereign Military Order of Malta), and attending the Lourdes pilgrimage.

In later years, ill health prevented him from finishing a biography of his friend, the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. It also limited his travelling, and he gave the house at Glenville to his younger daughter. Bence-Jones died in hospital in April 2010.

Film media Bence-Jones was interviewed and appeared in the documentary film The Raj In The Rain by Trust Films, filmed over ten years and released in 2012 (120 minutes run time), screened on RTÉ in 2013, with the Directors Cut DVD released in 2015.

List of major works

Non-fiction Mark Bence-Jones, The Remarkable Irish, D. McKay Co., 1966 Mark Bence-Jones, Palaces of the Raj: Magnificence and Misery of the Lord Sahibs, Allen and Unwin, 1973. , Mark Bence-Jones, Clive of India, Constable, 1974 Mark Bence-Jones, The Cavaliers, Constable, 1976 Mark Bence-Jones, Burke's Guide to Country Houses: Ireland. Volume 1 of Burke's and Savills Guide to Country Houses, Burke's Peerage, 1978. Revised edition: A Guide to Irish Country Houses, Constable, 1988. Second revised edition, 1990, reprinted 1996 Mark Bence-Jones, Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, The British Aristocracy, Constable, 1979 Mark Bence-Jones, The Viceroys of India, Constable, 1982 Mark Bence-Jones, Great English Homes: Ancestral Homes of England and Wales and the People Who Lived in Them, British Heritage Press, 1984. , Mark Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, Constable, 1987 Mark Bence-Jones, The Catholic Families, Constable, 1992

Fiction Mark Bence-Jones, All a Nonsense, Peter Davies, 1957 Mark Bence-Jones, Paradise Escaped, Davies, 1958 Mark Bence-Jones, Nothing in the City, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1965