John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne

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John Ulick Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne, CBE (9 November 1924–23 September 2005) was a British peer and a television producer.

Knatchbull was a TV producer from 1958 to 1988 and was a director of Mersham Productions in 1970, a director of Thames Television (later Chairman) and Euston Films from 1978 to 1995, and a director of Thorn EMI from 1981 to 1986. In 1979, he was invested as a Fellow of the British Film Institute and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

His filmography includes Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, A Passage to India, Sink the Bismarck!, and Little Dorrit. [1]

[edit] Personal life

Lord Brabourne was born in 1924, the son of Michael Knatchbull, 5th Baron Brabourne and his wife, the Lady Doreen Browne. He was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College, Oxford. He served in the Coldstream Guards, rising to the rank of Captain and fought in France in the Second World War from 1943.

On 26 October 1946, at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, at the age of 21, he married the Honourable Patricia Mountbatten, elder daughter and heiress of Viscount Mountbatten, later Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. They had seven children:

Norton Knatchbull, 8th Baron Brabourne (b. October 8, 1947), married Penelope Eastwood and has issue.
Hon. Michael-John Ulick Knatchbull (b. May 24, 1950), married firstly Melissa Owen, and secondly Penelope Coates, nee Henderson, and had issue.
Lady Joanna Edwina Doreen Knatchbull (b. March 5, 1955), married Baron Hubert Pernot du Breuil, and secondly Azriel Zuckerman, and had issue by both marriages.
Lady Amanda Patricia Victoria Knatchbull (b. June 26, 1957), married Charles Ellingworth. They have three sons.
Hon. Philip Wyndham Ashley Knatchbull (b. December 2, 1961), who has been twice married, and has issue.
Hon. Timothy Nicholas Sean Knatchbull (b. November 18, 1964), married Isabella Norman, 2nd daughter of British art patron and company director David Norman (himself great-nephew of the prominent banker Lord Norman). They have several children.
Hon. Nicholas Timothy Charles Knatchbull (November 18, 1964– August 27, 1979), murdered, aged 14, by an Irish Republican Army bomb.

Lord Brabourne was in the boat which was blown up by the IRA off the shores of Sligo in 1979, killing his father-in-law Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who lived in a nearby estate, his youngest son Nicholas Knatchbull, his mother, the Dowager Baroness Brabourne, and a local boy, Paul Maxwell, from County Fermanagh, who was Protestant.

Brabourne, his wife, and his son Timothy (Nicholas' twin brother) were injured, but survived the attack.

Lord Brabourne served as a governor of various schools, including: Norton Knatchbull School from 1947 to 2000, Wye Agricultural College from 1955 to 2000, and Gordonstoun School from 1964 to 1994. He was also a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Kent from 1993 to 1999.

He died in 2005 at his home in Kent at the age of 80. ^[2]