Rodd, Sir James Rennell, 1st Baron Rennell

(1858-1941)

   Born in London, the son of an officer in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1880. A high-flyer in the diplomatic service, in 1884 he was attaché to Berlin and in 1885 third secretary. His biography Frederick, Crown Prince and Emperor (1888) created diplomatic ripples. He served in Athens, Rome, Paris, British East Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia. In 1899 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St .George, and Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order in 1905. He retired from the diplomatic service in 1921 and in 1933 was raised to the peerage as Baron Rennell of Rodd, in the county of Hereford. He died at Ardath, Shamley Green, Surrey. Some of his poetry publications: Raleigh, 1880. Songs in the South, 1881. Poems in Many Lands, 1886. The Unknown Madonna, 1888. Ballads of the Fleet, 1901. War Poems, 1940. Some of his poems: "A Last Word," "A Roman Mirror," "A Song of Autumn," "In the Alps," "On the Border Hills," "Sea Pictures-France."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971.