Peter George Grenfell, 2nd Baron St. Just (22 July 1922 – 1984) was an English peer, a member of the House of Lords from 1943 until his death.

Life

Grenfell was the only son of Edward Grenfell, a partner in Morgan, Grenfell & Co., director of the Bank of England, and Member of Parliament for the City of London, and his wife Florence Emily Henderson.[1] He was educated at Sandroyd School and Harrow School.[2] In July 1935, while he was still there, his father was raised to the peerage as Baron St Just, of St Just in Penwith in the County of Cornwall.[3]

During the Second World War, Grenfell was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the King's Royal Rifle Corps. On 26 November 1941, his father died and he succeeded as Lord St Just,[1] but could not take his seat in the House of Lords until reaching the age of twenty-one two years later.

Wilbury House as built in 1710, illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus

On 1 June 1949, at St James's, Spanish Place, St Just married Leslie Nast, daughter of Condé Nast and Leslie Foster.[4][1] They were divorced in 1955, and on 25 July 1956 he married secondly Maria Britneva,[1] a Russian-born actress, the daughter of Alexander Britnev, whose mother had brought her to England as a child.[5] They lived at Wilbury House in Wiltshire; Maria continued to live there until her death in 1994.[6]

By his first wife, St Just was the father of Laura Claire Grenfell (born 1950), and by Maria Britneva he had two further daughters, Katherine Grenfell (1957),[1] known as Pulcheria,[7] and Natasha Jeannine Mary Grenfell (1959). His daughter Katherine married Oliver Gilmour.[1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Charles Mosley, ed., Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, volume 2 (2003), p. 1658
  2. ↑ "Lord St Just", The Times, issue 61973, 30 October 1984, p. 12
  3. ↑ The London Gazette, Issue 34176, 2 July 1935, p. 4241
  4. ↑ Marriages - Lord St. Just and Miss L. Nast, The Times, issue 51397, 2 June 1949, p. 7
  5. ↑ Kit Hesketh-Harvey, "Obituary: Maria St Just", The Independent, 24 February 1994, accessed 4 December 2020
  6. ↑ Lahr, John (28 July 2014). "The Lady and Tennessee". The New Yorker. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
  7. ↑ Kim Hubbard, "The Original Maggie the Cat, Maria St. Just, Remembers Her Loving Friend Tennessee Williams", People, 2 April 1990, accessed 7 December 2020
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