Brinsley Le Poer Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty

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William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench (September 18, 1911–May 18, 1995) was 8th Earl of Clancarty (an earldom in the Peerage of Ireland), Marquess van Heusden in the peerage of the Netherlands, as well as a prominent ufologist.

Born William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench, he was the fifth son of the 5th Earl of Clancarty and Mary Gwatkin Ellis. He was educated at the Nautical College, Pangbourne.

Clancarty was a firm believer in flying saucers, and in particular, the Hollow Earth theory. He claimed that he could trace his descent from 63,000BC, when beings from other planets had landed on Earth in spaceships. Most humans, he said, were descended from these aliens: "This accounts for all the different colour skins we've got here," he said in 1981. A few of these early aliens did not come from space, he explained, but emerged through tunnels from a civilisation which "still existed beneath the Earth's crust." There were seven or eight of these tunnels altogether, one at the North Pole, another at the South Pole, and others in such places as Tibet. "I haven't been down there myself," Clancarty said, "but from what I gather [these beings] are very advanced."

From 1956 to 1959 he edited the Flying Saucer Review and founded the International Unidentified Object Observer Corps. He also found employment selling advertising space for a gardening magazine housed opposite Waterloo Station. In 1967, he founded Contact International and served as its first president. He also served as vice-president of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) and was an honorary life member of the Ancient Astronauts Society.

When he succeeded to the earldom (created in 1803) on the death of his half-brother, Grenville Sydney Rocheforte, 7th Earl of Clancarty, in 1975 he founded a UFO Study Group at the House of Lords, and introduced Flying Saucer Review to its library.

Four years later he organised a celebrated debate on UFOs which attracted many speeches on both sides of the question. In one debate, Lord Strabolgi, for the Government, declared that there was nothing to convince him that any alien spacecraft had ever visited the Earth.

He wrote, under the name Brinsley Le Poer Trench, a number of books, including The Sky People (1960), Men Among Mankind (1962), Forgotten Heritage (1964), The Flying Saucer Story (1966), Operation Earth (1969), The Eternal Subject (1973), and Secret of the Ages (1974).

He married first, in 1940 (dissolved 1947), Diana, daughter of Sir William Younger, Bt. He married secondly, in 1961 (dissolved 1969), Mrs Wilma Belknap. He married thirdly, in 1974, Mrs Mildred Spong, who died in 1975. He married fourthly, in 1976, Mrs May Hraslcy.

He lived most of his life in South Kensington and died in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1995.

He was succeeded to the earldom by his nephew Nicholas Power Richard Le Poer Trench, 9th Earl of Clancarty.

[edit] Reference

• Obituary and memorial service report, Daily Telegraph, 22 May and 28 June 1995.

Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by: Grenville Rochefort	Earl of Clancarty 1975–1995	Succeeded by: Nicholas Le Poer Trench