Henry Bentinck, 11th Earl of Portland

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Henry Noel Bentinck, 11th Earl of Portland (born 2 October 1919 - died 30 January 1997) was a non-conformist intellectual, concerned about the environment.

Henry Bentinck was born in 1919, a Count/Graf Bentinck und Waldeck Limpurg of the Holy Roman Empire with a Royal Licence of 1886 to use the title in England. His father Robert Charles Graf Captain Bentinck (1875-1932) died when he was only 12. His mother Lady Norah Ida Emily Noel, eldest daughter of the Charles William Francis Noel, 3rd Earl of Gainsborough, died when he was 19.

He was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst Military Academy, but left after only a term amidst press headlines - "Count missing from Sandhurst". He worked as a cowboy in California for a year, returning to England in 1939 and marrying Pauline Ursula Mellowes in 1940. He registered as a Conscientious Objector but after the death of a close friend he joined the family regiment, the Coldstream Guards, as a private soldier. He was soon commissioned as a Lieutenant and served with distinction in Italy at Camino. He was wounded twice and a prisoner of war until 1945 when he rejoined the regiment in Trieste.

After the war he was a producer at the BBC where he met Professor Nathaniel Shaler who had forecast ecological catastrophe as early as the 1900s. This led to working as a "jackaroo" on a sheep station in Tasmania and emigration from 1952-1955.

He rejoined the BBC, as producer of the "Today programme" presented by Jack de Manio and other series. At this time he wrote his first book Anyone Can Understand the Atom. In 1959 he joined J Walter Thompson as an advertising producer, working on over 600 commercials.

He moved to Devon in 1974 with his second wife Jenny Hopkins to run a self-sufficient organic smallholding and guest-house for six years. Later he struck up a close friendship with James Lovelock the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, and published Life is a Sum.

In 1990, the dukedom of Portland died out and Henry succeeded to the earldom of Portland, using his maiden speech in the House of Lords to address environmental issues.

[edit] Family

He was married Pauline Mellowes from 1940 until her death in 1967; they had one son, Timothy Bentinck, Viscount Woodstock, and two daughters, Sorrel and Anna. He married Jenny Hopkins in 1974.