John Anthony Brabazon, 15th Earl of Meath (born 11 May 1941), previously known as Lord Ardee, is a British and Irish peer and a landowner in County Wicklow. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1998 to 1999.
Early life
editThe son of Major Anthony Windham Normand Brabazon and Elizabeth Mary Bowlby, he was known as Lord Ardee from 1949, when his father became 14th Earl of Meath. He was educated at Harrow School and was Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II between 1956 and 1958. In 1959, he was commissioned as a subaltern into the Grenadier Guards and served until 1963.[1]
Career
editOn 19 December 1998, he succeeded to his father's peerages, two in the peerage of Ireland, Earl of Meath (1627) and Baron Ardee (1616), and one in the peerage of the United Kingdom, Baron Chaworth of Eaton Hall (1831), the last of these giving him a seat in the House of Lords. However, this came to an end when the House of Lords Act 1999 came into effect.[1]
In 1997, Meath was reported to be a writer and speaker on national competitiveness and social decay in the last two decades of the 19th century.[2]
Personal life
editOn 12 May 1973, he married Xenia Goudime-Levkovitsch, daughter of Paul Goudime-Levkovitsch.[1] They have three children:
- Lady Corinna Lettice Brabazon (born 1974)[1]
- Anthony Jacques Brabazon, Lord Ardee (born 1977)[1]
- Lady Serena Alexandra Brabazon (born 1979)[1]
He lives at Killruddery House, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.[1] In 2001, he sold a mountain sporting estate of 4,125 acres at Rathdrum, County Wicklow, for £10 million, but continued to own some 800 acres in the same county, estimated to be far more valuable.[3][4]
Notes
edit- ^ a b c d e f g Charles Mosley, ed., Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, vol. 2 (Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), p. 2656
- ^ Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics (1997): “Lord Brabazon (later the 15th Earl of Meath), a popular writer and speaker on the subject of national competitiveness and social decay in the 1880s and 1890s, isolated England as the one country among the 'civilized' that failed to consider the improvement of children's health and strength as carefully as that of their mental condition.”
- ^ Kevin Cahill , Who Owns Britain? (2001), pp. 354, 383, 388
- ^ Alan O'Day, Neil Fleming, Longman Handbook of Modern Irish History Since 1800 (2014), p. 617