Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A G.B.E. group of eight awarded to Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, G.B.E. (Civil) Knight Grand Cross, 2nd type set of insignia, sash badge, silver-gilt and enamel; breast star, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, with full sash, insignia on pad but no case; British War and Victory Medals (21353D. A. E. de la Warr, D.H., R.N.R.); Defence Medal; Jubilee 1935; Coronation 1937; Coronation 1953, these unnamed; France, Third Republic, Legion of Honour, Officer’s breast badge, silver-gilt, gold and enamel, rosette on ribbon, medals mounted court style for display, generally extremely fine (9) £ 3800-4200

G.B.E. London Gazette 2 January 1956.

Harbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville was born in Battle, Sussex, on 20 June 1900, the only son of the 8th Earl De La Warr. He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1915 his father was killed in the Great War and he succeeded him as 9th Earl. He enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve on 1 May 1918. He became the first hereditary peer to join the Labour Party. In 1924 he was one of the youngest ever ministers when he was appointed Lord in Waiting in the first Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald. In the second Labour government of 1929-31 he served as Under-Secretary of State for War, then Under-Secretary of State for Agriculture. In the 1931 National Government, De La Warr continued to serve as a junior minister for Agriculture, later being transferred to Fisheries, Board of Education and the Colonial Office. In 1935 the De La Warr Pavilion was built in Bexhill-on-Sea, named after the 9th Earl. In 1937 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave the Earl his first cabinet post as Lord Privy Seal. After the Munich agreement he was promoted to President of the Board of Education. In 1940 he was appointed First Commissioner of Works but was dropped by Churchill from the wartime cabinet. He was Chairman of the National Labour Party, 1931-43; Director of Home Flax Production, Ministry of Supply, 1943-49; Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council, 1943-49; Government representative to negotiate with the Emperor of Ethiopia, 1944 and Chairman of the Estate Committee, National Trust, 1950-51 and 1955. In Churchill’s peacetime government of 1951, he was appointed Postmaster General, 1951-55. Awarded the G.B.E. in 1956. Chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society, 1957-60. Earl De La Warr died on 28 January 1976.

Sold with the paperback book, Bucking the Trend, the life and times of the ninth Earl De La Warr, by Alastair Fairley; the booklet Twelve Little Poems, by Margaret Sackville, with a note on ‘Clyst, Cheltenham’ headed paper reading, ‘These aren’t good really. Best New Year Wishes, M.S.’; a parchment property lease to a member of the De La Warr family for a property in Bexhill; a hand-written letter of the 5th Earl De La Warr; together with the 9th Earl’s copied R.N.R. service paper and a quantity of copied research on the 9th Earl and other members of the family.