Shane Leslie
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Sir John Randolph Leslie (September 24, 1885 – August 1971), third baronet, was an Irish diplomat and writer, took the name Shane.
He was born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, and was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he became a Roman Catholic convert and Irish nationalist, and adopted the Irish form of his name.
Before World War I he travelled extensively and in 1912 he married Marjorie Ide, the youngest daughter of Henry Clay Ide, the United States ambassador to Spain. During the war he was in a British Ambulance Corps, until invalided out; he was then sent to Washington to help the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, obtain American intervention in the war in the aftermath of the failed 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and the execution of its leaders.
In the 1918 election the Irish Parliamentary Party lost massively to Sinn Féin, putting an end to Shane Leslie's political career, but as the cousin of Winston Churchill he remained a primary witness to much that was said and done outside the official record during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
After his wife Marjorie died in 1951, he married Iris Laing in 1958.
He wrote extensively, in a wide range of styles, in verse and prose, over several decades.
Works
- Mrs. Fitzherbert : A Life. Chiefly from Unpublished Sources. 2 volumes. – London : Burns Oates, 1939–40
