Whatever you think of Henry Lytton Cobbold – I think we can all agree the name is a bit of a mouthful. My son, at school, was called Edward Silly-Long-Name. I was called Elsie, for the initials L.C. Now, for ease in day-to-day use, except when I’m representing Knebworth House, I tend to shorten it to Henry Cobbold.
Very touching this month of Remembrance, is to read this letter that was recently discovered in Suffolk. It is a letter from my Lytton great-grandfather to my Cobbold great-grandfather. It thanks for the sympathy expressed at the death of the second of his two Lytton son-and-heirs, John, killed in battle at El Alamein on 4th July 1942, aged 32. John’s elder brother, Antony, had been killed in an accident flying for the RAF 601 Squadron ten years earlier, aged 29. Victor Lytton says here to Clement Cobbold, “We have now lost both our sons but you have given us yours to take their place”. It is sobering to imagine the tears of this terrible time.
A consequence of these two tragedies was that my grandmother Hermione and her husband Kim Cobbold inherited the Lytton family home of Knebworth House, and we, their children and grandchildren, all became Lytton Cobbolds. So this month more than any, contemplatively, and in awe of the sacrifices made in the terrible wars of the 20th Century, I sign off, respectfully,
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
