Eustace Clare Grenville Murray

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Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (1824 – 20 December 1881), English journalist, was the illegitimate son of Richard Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Educated at Hertford College, Oxford, he entered the diplomatic service through the influence of Lord Palmerston, and in 1851 joined the British embassy at Vienna as attache. At the same time he agreed to act as Vienna correspondent of a London daily paper, a breach of the conventions of the British Foreign Office which cost him his post. In 1852 he was transferred to Hanover, and thence to Constantinople, and finally, in 1855, was made consul-general at Odessa. In 1868 he returned to England, and devoted himself to journalism. He contributed to the early numbers of Vanity Fair, and in 1869 founded a clever but abusive society paper, the Queen's Messenger. For a libel published in this paper Lord Carrington horsewhipped him on the doorstep of a London club. Murray was subsequently charged with perjury for denying on oath his authorship of the article. Remanded on bail, he escaped to Paris, where he subsequently lived, acting as correspondent of various London papers. In 1874 he helped Edmund Yates to found the World. Murray died at Passy on 20 December 1881.

His score of books, several of which were translated into French and published in Paris, include French Pictures in English Chalk (1876–1878); The Roning Englishman in Turkey (1854); Men of the Second Empire (1872); Young Brown (1874); Sidelights on English Society (1881); and Under tile Lens: Social Photographs (1885).