File 059 - Aubrey Herbert

Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert was born on April 3, 1880, in Highclere Castle, Hampshire, England.

He was a British diplomat, politician, traveller, and intelligence officer. He suffered from poor eyesight and became almost blind by his early 40s. He scraped through the Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. A renowned traveller, especially in the Middle East, he spoke French, Italian, German, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and Albanian. In 1902, he became an honorary attaché at the embassy in Tokyo and, in 1904, in Constantinople. In 1911, Herbert was elected a Conservative Member of Parliament, a post he held for the rest of his life. In 1910, he married Mary Gertrude Vesey (1889–1970). He became a passionate advocate of Albanian independence, having visited the country in 1907, 1911, and 1913. He acted as an adviser to the Albanian delegates at the 1912–1913 London Balkan Peace Conference. At the outbreak of World War I, despite very poor eyesight, Herbert joined the Irish Guards and served in a supernumerary position. In 1915, he became part of the British Intelligence Department in Cairo. He was sent on an intelligence mission into the eastern Mediterranean and spent the rest of the war in Mesopotamia, Salonika, and Italy. In 1923, at a Balliol College annual dinner, he met his old tutor, A. L. Smith, who advised him that the best cure for blindness was teeth extraction. Following this advice, Herbert developed blood poisoning and died on September 23, 1923, in London, England.