Francis Hastings, 15th Earl of Huntingdon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Hastings,_16th_Earl_of_Huntingdon

Francis John Clarence Westenra Plantagenet Hastings, 16th Earl of Huntingdon (30 January 1901 – 24 August 1990), styled Viscount Hastings until 1939, was a British artist, academic and Labour politician.

Background and education

Lord Huntingdon was the son of Warner Hastings, 15th Earl of Huntingdon, and his wife Maud Margaret (née Wilson), and was educated at Eton, Christ Church, Oxford, and the Slade School of Art, London.

Artistic and academic career

Huntingdon was a pupil of the Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera and had exhibitions in notably London, Paris, Chicago and San Francisco. He was also a Professor at the Camberwell College of Arts and the Central School of Arts & Crafts, London. He was later Chairman of the Committee of the Society of Mural Painters between 1951 and 1958.

Public life

During the Second World War he was Deputy Controller of Defence of the Andover Rural District Council from 1941 to 1945. Huntingdon succeeded in the earldom in 1939 and took his seat on the Labour benches in the House of Lords. He served under Clement Attlee as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1945 to 1950. He was the author of The Golden Octopus and Commonsense about India.

Family

Lord Huntingdon married firstly Cristina Casati, daughter of Camillo, Marquis Casati Stampa di Soncino, and his wife, the artistic muse Luisa, in 1925. They had one daughter:

Lady Moorea Hastings (4 March 1928 - 21 October 2011). She was from 1957 to 1966 the wife of politician and diarist Woodrow Lyle Wyatt, Baron Wyatt of Weeford, and later married the adman Brinsley Black, named as one of the best-dressed Englishmen in the inaugural issue of Men in Vogue in 1965. Lady Moorea, who was famously unmaternal, had one son each with each of her husbands:

Hon. Pericles Plantagenet James Casati Wyatt (born 1963), became an owner and operator of water parks and recreational vehicle camps in Arizona.; half-brother to journalist Petronella Wyatt.

Octavius Orlando Irvine Casati Black (born 1968),; was at Eton with David Cameron, to whom he remains close; married to Tory barrister Joanne Cash.

Huntingdon and his first wife divorced in 1943 (Cristina then married Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford and died in 1953). Huntingdon married secondly Margaret Lane, daughter of Harry George Lane, and former wife of Bryan Wallace, son of Edgar Wallace, in 1944. Lady Huntingdon was a writer and critic and published books on Beatrix Potter, Samuel Johnson and the Brontë sisters. They had two daughters:

Lady Selina Shirley Hastings (born 5 March 1945).

Lady Caroline Harriet Hastings (born 12 June 1946).

Lord Huntingdon died in August 1990, aged 89, and was succeeded in the earldom by his first cousin once removed William Edward Robin Hood Hastings-Bass. Lady Huntingdon died in 1994.