In this series of essays, I have sought to write about people who are less well-known than they ought to be in relation to their importance in our island’s story. Lord Esher is the most obscure and least remembered so far, but of the highest importance.
On first encountering the moustachioed Esher, he looks like a typical late Victorian. Although a close friend and adviser to Edward VII, he was never part of the racy and fashionable Marlborough House set. He was too reserved in public and far too intellectual.
Esher, or Reginald Brett as strictly he ought to be referred to during his early life, as he only came into the title on the death of his father in 1899, had an education that was nominally conventional. He was sent to Eton in 1865, as his father was ambitious for him and wanted to improve his social standing, and then to Cambridge.
He was very close at Eton to William Johnson, who later changed his name to Cory, the author of the Eton Boating Song, who had to leave the school in 1872 because of his close, but not necessarily improper, relations with boys. This was Esher’s first link to scandal, but was not to be his last.
