Sir Edward Marsh

Sir Edward Howard Marsh, 1872-1953, Knight, Public Servant and Patron of the Arts. Educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge where he took a first class, parts I and II, classical tripos, 1893-1895. He entered the Colonial Office in 1896 and worked for (Sir) Winston Churchill until 1908. He worked for the Board of Trade, 1908-1910; the Home Office, 1910-1911; Admiralty, 1911-1915; Munitions, 1917; War Office, 1919-1921; Colonial Office, 1921-1922; the Treasury, 1924-1929 and the Dominions Office, 1930-1937. He retired in 1937. Marsh corrected proofs of Churchill's literary writings from Marlborough (4 volumes, 1933-1938) onwards, and also 16 works by Somerset Maugham. Marsh began collecting pictures in 1896; acquired the Horne collection in 1904; became a patron of contemporary British painting and literature; edited 5 volumes of Georgian Poetry, 1912-1922; was literary executor of Rupert Brooke, whose collected poems he published in 1918. His translations include La Fontaine's Fables (2 volumes, 1931) and Odes of Horace, 1941. He published his reminiscences, A Number of People, in 1939, was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, governor of the Old Vic, and chairman of the Contemporary Art Society, 1936-1852; Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, 1937.

Reference: The Concise Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992).