David Herbert: life and works

The Honourable David Alexander Reginald Herbert (3 October 1908 – 3 April 1995) was a British socialite and writer.

He was the second son of Reginald Herbert, 15th Earl of Pembroke. He spent his first few years in Castletown, Ireland. At the age of four, he moved to the family home of Wilton, near Salisbury. Attending Wixenford Preparatory School, he was far along sent upon to Eton. He had brief stints as both a film actor, appearing in 1930’s Knowing Men, and as a cabaret performer. He briefly shared an apartment subsequent to Noël Coward in the East End, and was satirized by Lord Berners as the setting Daisy Montgomery in his 1936 satiric novel, The Girls of Radcliff Hall. He was plus scathingly satirized as “Peter Barclay” in William Bayer’s novel Tangier.

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He spent in the region of fifty years in Tangier, Morocco where he was known for his full of life personality, frequent lavish parties, good taste, and ruthless snobbery. He was referred to by Ian Fleming as ‘the Queen of Tangier’. He was labeled as the ‘most unpleasant snob’ by author Patrick Thursfield, who regularly enjoyed attending his well-known parties. He died of kidney failure in 1995 and was buried in the cemetery at Saint Andrew’s Church. He had been a devout Anglican. On his tombstone was engraved, “He loved Morocco”.

His books, with vitality and wit, recall his years with such figures as Cecil Beaton, Lady Diana Cooper, Noël Coward, Paul and Jane Bowles, Cyril Connolly, Brian Howard, Barbara Hutton, Osbert Sitwell and Tallulah Bankhead. These include Second Son: An Autobiography (1972), which included a foreword by Paul Bowles and photographs by Cecil Beaton, Engaging Eccentrics: Recollections (1990), his second volume of autobiography, and Relations and Revelations: Advice to Jemima (1992), a folder of memories and opinions written in the form of advice to his great-niece Jemima.

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