Percy Radcliffe

General Sir Percy Pollexfen de Blaquiere Radcliffe, (9 February 1874 – 9 February 1934) was a British Army officer who reached high office in the 1930s.

Early life Radcliffe was born on 9 February 1874. His parents were W. Pollexfen Radcliffe and Isabel de Blaquiere. He was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military Academy.

Military career Officers of the Canadian Corps being presented to King George V, August 1916. Brigadier General Radcliffe is stood tenth on the left.

Radcliffe was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1893. He saw service with 'G' Battery, Royal Horse Artillery in the Second Boer War between 1899 and 1900,

Promoted to major in October 1910, in October 1911 he was made a general staff officer, grade 2, taking over from Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Bruce Williams.

He saw active service during the First World War on the Western Front, He was made a brevet lieutenant colonel in June 1915, lieutenant colonel in 1916 and a brevet colonel the following year. was appointed director of military operations at the War Office. He replaced Major General Frederick Maurice.

Radcliffe continued in the role until 1922. His final appointment was as General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Southern Command from 1933 until his death, when he fell from a horse and had a heart attack, on his sixtieth birthday, in 1934.

Personal life Radcliffe married twice – first to Rahmeh Theodora Swinburne in 1918 and then to Florence Alice Coromandel Tagg in 1932. From 1905 to 1934 Radcliffe owned a house in Menton in the south of France. The garden, which he landscaped and curated, is now Menton's botanical garden. It is named the Jardin botanique Val Rahmeh after his first wife.

Works Tactical Employment of Field Artillery (which he translated from the French). Report on the Franco-British Mission to Poland, July, August 1920.