Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath


Henry Frederick Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath , styled Lord Henry Thynne until 1916 and Viscount Weymouth between 1916 and 1946, was a British aristocrat, landowner, and Conservative Party politician.

Background and education

Lord Bath was the second but eldest surviving son of Thomas Thynne, 5th Marquess of Bath, and Violet Mordaunt, the illegitimate daughter of Harriet Mordaunt and Lowry Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen. He was educated at The New Beacon Preparatory School, Harrow, and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1916 he became the heir apparent to the family titles and estates after his elder brother, John, was killed in action in the First World War.
At Oxford, Thynne was part of the Railway Club, which included: Henry Yorke, Roy Harrod, Henry Thynne, David Plunket Greene, Edward Henry Charles James Fox-Strangways, 7th Earl of Ilchester, Brian Howard, Michael Parsons, 6th Earl of Rosse, John Sutro, Hugh Lygon, Harold Acton, Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross, Mark Ogilvie-Grant, John Drury-Lowe.
In the 1920s the tabloid press considered him one of the Bright Young Things.

Political and military careers

As Viscount Weymouth, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Frome between 1931 and 1935, and served as a member of the Council of the Duchy of Cornwall from 1933 to 1936 and Justice of the Peace for Wiltshire in 1938.
He gained the rank of Major in the service of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, fought in the Second World War, and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Silver Star for actions during that period.
Thynne succeeded his father as Marquess of Bath in 1946. He was noted for his forestry work on the ancestral estate of Longleat. It was he who developed the safari park and opened the house to the public in 1949.
From 1960 onwards he amassed what would become the largest collection of paintings by Adolf Hitler, numbering sixty by 1983. To some extent an admirer of Hitler, the Marquess is quoted as saying “Hitler did a hell of a lot for his country”.

Family

On 27 October 1927, Lord Weymouth married, firstly, Daphne Vivian, daughter of George Vivian, 4th Baron Vivian, and they were divorced in 1953. They had five children:
After becoming Lord Bath he married, secondly, Virginia Penelope Parsons, on 15 July 1953, following her divorce earlier that year from David Tennant. They had one daughter: