| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Lord Moyne | |
| Birth Name: | Bryan Walter Guinness |
| Birth Date: | 27 October 1905 |
| Birth Place: | London, England |
| Death Place: | Biddesden, Wiltshire, England |
| Education: | Eton College Christ Church, Oxford |
| Children: | 11, including Jonathan, 3rd Baron Moyne, and Desmond |
Bryan Walter Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne, (27 October 1905 - 6 July 1992) was a British peer, poet, novelist and socialite. He was an heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, and briefly married to Diana Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters.
Bryan Guinness was born to Hon. Walter Guinness (created 1st Baron Moyne in 1932), son of Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and Lady Evelyn Stuart Erskine, daughter of the 14th Earl of Buchan. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1931. At Oxford, Guinness was part of the Railway Club.[1]
As an heir to the Anglo-Irish Guinness family brewing fortune and a handsome, charming young man, Bryan was an eligible bachelor. One of London's "Bright young things", he was an organiser of the 1929 "Bruno Hat" hoax art exhibition held at his home in London.[2]
In 1929, Guinness married Hon. Diana Mitford, daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale and one of the Mitford sisters. They had two sons:
The couple became leaders of the London artistic and social scene and were dedicatees of Evelyn Waugh's second novel Vile Bodies. However, they divorced in 1933 after Diana deserted Guinness for British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.
In 1931, Guinness bought Biddesden House – an 18th-century country house in Wiltshire, near Ludgershall village and the Hampshire town of Andover – together with about . In 1990, he and his family owned about 600 acres in Ludgershall parish, including Biddesden Farm.[3]
Guinness remarried in 1936 to Elisabeth Nelson (1912–1999), daughter of Thomas Arthur Nelson, of the Nelson publishing family,[4] with whom he had nine children:
During World War II, Guinness served for three years in the Middle East with the Spears Mission to the Free French, being a fluent French speaker, with the rank of Major. In November 1944, Guinness succeeded to the barony when his father, posted abroad as Resident Minister in the Middle East by his friend Winston Churchill, was assassinated in Cairo.
After the war, Lord Moyne was on the board of the Guinness corporation as vice-chairman from 1947 to 1979, as well as the Guinness Trust and the Iveagh Trust, and sat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.[6] He served for 35 years as a trustee of the National Gallery of Ireland and donated several works to the gallery. He wrote a number of critically applauded novels, memoirs, books of poetry, and plays. With Frank Pakenham he sought the return of the "Lane Bequest" to Dublin, resulting in the 1959 compromise agreement.[7] He was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[8] He served as pro-chancellor of Trinity College Dublin from 1965 to 1977 and was made an honorary fellow in 1977.[9] [10]
Lord Moyne died in 1992 at Biddesden House, his Wiltshire home (near Andover, Hampshire), and was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne.