‘ He was a heavy drinker and frequented back-street bars and shady pubs where he mixed with a rough crowd, associations that eventually contributed to his death when he was brutally murdered…‘. His Wikipedia entry states that he was careless with money and suffered from a series of financial crises. (Lees-Milne was also a former lover of Pope-Hennessy, who had acted as a witness for Lees-Milne’s marriage). In a book by James Lees-Milne, he describes Pope-Hennessy as ‘ the devil got a firm grip of him in his twenties and early thirties.’ He spent the money of older women whilst frankly discussing his homosexual life to them. (Nicolson also listed Guy Burgess as another of his conquests). He had previously been in a relationship with Harold Nicolson, a former diplomat, writer and MP. He lived at 7 and then 9 Ladbroke Grove, London and in 1960 was invested with the Insignia of Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen. He was the brother of Sir John Pope-Hennessy, who was the Director of both the V&A and British Museums, and had formerly shared a flat with the disgraced spy, Guy Burgess. Richard James Arthur Pope-Hennessy was the former editor of The Spectator, a well-connected author and commissioned by the Queen in 1955 to write a biography of Queen Mary. ![]() The Murder of James Pope-Hennessy 20th November 1916 – 25th January 1974
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