Lord Gladwyn
Author and editor who led upmarket walking tours and was ‘a monument to over-sixties energy’
THE 2ND LORD GLADWYN, better known as Miles Jebb, who has died at the age of 87, was the only son of Sir Gladwyn Jebb (later the 1st Lord Gladwyn) and his wife, Cynthia Noble.
He became an expert on walking, one of his lifetime delights, and also an author and editor. His most important book was the volume of his mother’s diaries, The Diaries of Cynthia Gladwyn, which he edited and published in 1995. This was hailed as almost rivalling Chips Channon, Woodrow Wyatt describing them as “robust diaries studded with sharp observations and roguish judgments”, and Selina Hastings relishing “her talent for vivid description, shrewdness about people, love of gossip and a rich vein of unrestrained malice.” Anne Chisholm praised Jebb for not having edited out “the foibles and prejudices of her period and class.”
Miles Alvery Gladwyn Jebb was born on March 3 1930. He had two sisters, one of whom, Vanessa, was married to the historian Hugh Thomas, later Lord Thomas of Swynnerton. His father was aloof and somewhat intimidating, while his mother was highly cultured, loved music, and was a stalwart figure at the Aldeburgh Festival. His father’s disdain may have explained why Miles himself was always somewhat shy and retiring, while in no way overawed by the passing show.
His mother was the greatgranddaughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As a dedicated environmentalist, however, Miles decried Brunel’s lack of concern about “the pollution caused by the filthy emissions of soot which gushed from his steam engines or, indeed, by the fumes of his ostentatious cigar.”
Young Miles was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, sharing digs with John Julius Norwich, the future Lord Oaksey and Raymond Bonham Carter. He served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards, and was a Lieutenant (Pilot Officer) in the RAFVR.
He then became a senior manager with BOAC (later BA) from 1961 to 1983, becoming a considerable expert in all aspects of air transport, and at one time specifically in the development of air freight. In 1966 he prepared a paper for BOAC assessing the implications of European air deregulation, which would lead to British Airways investing in Deutsche BA and Air Liberté. One of his more exciting expeditions was to Dubai as a guest of Emirates, where he spent an hour in their flight simulator and managed to land a Boeing 777 at Dubai in a sandstorm.
His job afforded him great opportunities for travel, but what he liked best was to explore on foot. He was described as “a monument to over-sixties energy” and led upmarket walking tours in Wales and through France and Italy. One walk from Volterra to San Gimignano on tracks and dirt roads made his companions feel that they had been transported back to the Renaissance era. He once walked the Thames Path from Windsor to Lechlade in a week, at a rhythmic pace of two and a half miles an hour. He preferred to walk between October and April, when the river cruises were in hibernation.
He published a number of books related to walking and the English countryside, the best of which was
Walkers (1986). Others were The Thames Valley Heritage Walk (1980),
and A Guide to the South Downs Way
(1984), in the course of which he spent a year studying its topography, ecology, history and literature, and “trudged” all over the downs and rode the length of them on horseback. He published A Guide to the Thames Path (1988), in which he commended the many attractions on the South Bank as “a row of pearls, a row which includes many much smaller gems”, and served up a deadpan description by Lord Denning of the activities of Christine Keeler at Cliveden. He then published East Anglia (1990), A Guide to the Colleges of Oxford (1992), and Suffolk (1995).
After publishing his mother’s diaries, he wrote The Lord Lieutenants and their Deputies (2007), and then in 2010 a biography of Patrick Shawstewart, the First World War poet and soldier.
A lean figure, Jebb bore a passing resemblance to the actor Alastair Sim. Alastair Forbes, writing in 1995, described him as “a gaunt, Albany-resident bachelor who, it has often been remarked upon, has almost since leaving Eton managed to look older than his now nonagenarian sire, Gladwyn himself, and this despite his quasi-olympic pedestrian feats on both sides of the Channel.”
He succeeded his father as the 2nd Lord Gladwyn in 1996, serving in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher until the hereditary peers left in 1999. He spoke about English Heritage’s plans for Stonehenge, the problems of new houses in the Green Belt, and the use of the Thames as a highway. He reminded their Lordships that in March 1952 Lord Noel-buxton (6ft 3in tall) had attempted to walk at low tide across the Thames opposite the Palace of Westminster “to the general admiration of his fellow parliamentarians assembled on the terrace” to prove there had once been a ford there, and had not got his head wet. He added: “If any very tall Member of this House would like to follow in his steps, I have no doubt that it would be an excellent tourist draw.”
He was unmarried, but was loyal to a large circle of family and friends and they to him, not least for his quirky sense of humour. The Gladwyn barony is now extinct.
The 2nd Lord Gladwyn, born March 3 1930, died August 15 2017