Montague "Monty" Yeats-Brown CMG[1] (2 August 1834 – 22 February 1921) was a 19th-century British diplomat in Genoa and Boston.
Yeats-Brown was born on 2 August 1834 on Palmaria, and was christened on an American warship then in harbour at the island. He grew up speaking Genoese, Italian, German and English.[2]
His father, Timothy Yeats Brown, from an English banking family, became Consul of Genoa in 1840;[3] his maternal grandfather John Cadwalader was a militia general in the American Revolution. "Monty" was sent to a German school in Brussels at the age of 10, before passing into Marlborough College.[4]
He served in Genoa, Kingdom of Sardinia[5] and then in Boston.[1] [6] [7] [8]
Yeats-Brown began working in the British Consulate in Genoa in 1854 aged 20, was appointed Vice-Consul two years later, and then Consul after his father's retirement in 1857, "though only then 23, which is unusually young for such a post".[5] [2] He married Agnes Matilda Bellingham, sister of Sir Henry Bellingham, 4th Baronet, on 3 November 1875.[9] Yeats-Brown was appointed as consul to Boston in 1893,[2] retiring from the diplomatic service in 1896.[8]
In 1867, Yeats-Brown purchased Castello Brown above Portofino,[10] which he restored over subsequent years, and where he died on 22 February 1921.[11]
One of his sons, Francis Yeats-Brown, became well known for his dashing autobiography The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.
List of diplomats of Great Britain to the Republic of Genoa