Esmond Romilly

{{Infobox officeholder

Nellie Hozier

Winston Churchill (uncle by marriage)

Giles Samuel Bertram Romilly (brother)

Constancia Romilly

Canada

Second Spanish Republic

| branch = Royal Air Force

Royal Canadian Air Force

Spanish Republican Army

Esmond Romily's maternal grandfather was Sir Henry Montague Hozier (1838–1907), a professional soldier and city financier who was knighted in 1903.

In 1878 he had married Lady Blanche Ogilvy (1852–1925), eldest daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie.

Four children were produced during the marriage: Katherine, born 1883, Clementine born in 1885, and twins Nellie and William born in 1888.

However, the marriage was unhappy and marked by infidelities on both sides, to the extent that the precise parentage of the four children has long been doubted.

Hozier appeared to have accepted that the elder daughters were probably his, but largely ignored the twins who, when the marriage ended in 1891, remained with their mother while Hozier initially took responsibility for the older girls before disappearing from the family scene altogether.

The question of the twins' paternity remained unresolved.

One suggested candidate was the writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; another was Blanche's brother-in-law, Lord Redesdale, grandfather of the future Mitford sisters.

Nellie Hozier grew up in the family's various homes in Seaford on the English south coast, in Dieppe in France, and finally in Berkhamsted where she attended the Girls' High School with her elder sister Clementine.

In September 1908, she acted as a bridesmaid at Clementine's wedding to Winston Churchill.

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Nellie volunteered as a nursing auxiliary in Belgium and was briefly a prisoner of war before repatriation at the end of the year.

Back in England, she met an officer in the Scots Guards, Lieutenant-Colonel Bertram Henry Samuel Romilly, who had been seriously wounded while fighting in France.

Romilly was from a distinguished landowning family with a long tradition of public service.

The couple married in December 1915; their elder son Giles Samuel Bertram Romilly was born on 19 September 1916.

Esmond Marcus David Romilly (10 June 1918 – 30 November 1941) was a British socialist, anti-fascist, and journalist, who was in turn a schoolboy rebel, a veteran with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and, following the outbreak of the Second World War, an observer with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

He is perhaps best remembered for his teenage elopement with his distant cousin Jessica Mitford, the second youngest of the Mitford sisters.

Born into an aristocratic family – he was a nephew of Clementine Churchill – he emerged in the 1930s as a precocious rebel against his background, openly espousing communist views at the age of fifteen.

He ran away from Wellington College, and campaigned vociferously against the British public school system, by publishing a critical left wing magazine, Out of Bounds: Public Schools' Journal Against Fascism, Militarism, and Reaction, and (jointly with his brother) a memoir analysing his school experiences.

At the age of eighteen, he joined the International Brigades and fought on the Madrid front during the Spanish Civil War, of which he wrote and published a vivid account.

Before departing for Spain, Romilly had largely abandoned communism (he never formally joined the party) in favour of democratic socialism.

Unable to settle in London, he and his wife relocated to America in 1939.

When the Second World War broke out Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and began training as a pilot, but was discharged on medical grounds.

He re-enlisted and retrained as an observer.

1940–1941 (Royal Canadian Airforce)
1936–1937 (Spanish Republican Army)

| rank = Pilot Officer (United Kingdom)

Air Observer (Canada)

| unit = No. 58 Squadron RAF (United Kingdom/Canada)

| battles =

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| serviceyears = 1941–1941 (Royal Air Force)

Posted back to England, he lost his life when his plane failed to return from a bombing raid in November 1941.