Rakish aristocrat who founded the Port Eliot Lit Fest

The 10th Earl of St Germans 1941-2016

Eccentric, rakish and a touch “Byronic”, with a distinguished lineage and a family blighted by tragedy, the 10th Earl of St Germans was everything the popular press likes the British aristocracy to be, said The Daily Telegraph. He presided over a suitably magnificent, 6,000-acre estate, where the St Germans family have lived since the mid-16th century: Port Eliot, a vast pile in Cornwall, is said to have 82 chimneys, and 11 staircases. Its kitchen lies some 350ft from the dining room, and boasts a steam-driven cherry-stoner (not that the Earl visited the kitchen much; only two or three times a year, he said). In the 1980s, he hosted an annual Elephant Fayre in the grounds, a riotous event which was popular with New Age types; it was later succeeded by the Port Eliot Literary Festival – a go-to event for the Boden-bohemian smart set.

Peregrine Nicholas Eliot was born on 2 January 1941, into a family “riddled with lunacy, suicide and internecine division”, said The Times. The heir of the 5th Earl killed himself during a village cricket match and was only found when he failed to come on to bowl; the 6th Earl died after falling from his horse during a point-to-point race; the 7th ended his days in a mental hospital. “Perry” was the only son of the 9th Earl of St Germans, a dandy known as Old Nic, and also, owing to his devotion to the turf, the “Bookie Peer”. He listed his recreations in Who’s Who as “huntin’ the slipper, shootin’ a line, fishin’ for compliments”; his son made similar claims to idleness, and in his own entry, shortened this to “mucking about”.

The 10th Earl did not have an easy childhood: his parents split up when he was six, and his mother died of breast cancer when he was ten. Around that time, his father settled in Tangiers (becoming known as the Tangerine Earl), leaving Perry and his sister in the care of their grandparents, and a strict nanny. His grandfather was described as having “all the stiffness of a poker but none of its occasional warmth”; his grandmother, to whom he was very close, committed suicide in 1962. Perry would later describe himself as a “failure” at Eton: though he loved poetry and the arts, he claimed to be barely able to read or write. On leaving school he embraced the hippy spirit: he drove to Tangiers on a vintage motorbike, and to India in a VW Beetle; he travelled to the Atlas mountains in search of the Cornish chough; and acquired, with others, the rights to the Beatles’ merchandise (a venture that, for all his entrepreneurial nous, lost him money). Close friends with Michael Eavis, he attended the early Glastonbury festivals at Worthy Farm, but had no memory of them, because of all the hallucinogens.

In 1981, he staged the first Elephant Fayre (an elephant features in the family crest, and was present in the form of a giant wooden structure); the rock festivals became very popular, with acts including The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees – but when they were invaded by hordes of travellers, locals grew weary of the drugs and disorder. In 1986, Lord Eliot – by then suffering from emphysema – called a halt. Seventeen years later, the more upmarket cultural Port Eliot Literary Festival was born. Its success was largely down to his third wife, Catherine Wilson. He had three sons with his first wife, Jacquetta Lampson (the youngest of whom was actually Lucian Freud’s), before they divorced in 1990. His second marriage proved a disaster from the off; she was not liked locally – villagers wore T-shirts reading: “It was better with Jacquetta” – and they divorced in 1996. He married Catherine in 2005. In 2006, the family was hit by further tragedy when his oldest son, Jago, died after suffering an epileptic fit in the bath; Jago’s 11-year-old son Albert (Albie), succeeds to the earldom.