1888-1939
Sir Philip Sassoon
UK socialite, politician
1. Introduction
Philip was born in Paris into the wealth of both the Sassoon and Rothschild families. He chose British nationality at age 19 and became a UK politician, art collector and renowned host at his lavish properties. He was private secretary to Field Marshal Haig during World War I and then to Prime Minister David Lloyd George before becoming under-secretary of state for air, then first commissioner of works. He was a second cousin of the World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon. Churchill visited Philip at his homes in London and Kent, where he painted and mingled with Sassoon’s many other distinguished guests. Sassoon died aged 50 of complications from influenza.
2. Stories
- Philip was the great-grandson of the founders of both the Sassoon and Rothschild business empires.
- Sassoon’s house in Park Lane, Mayfair, was home to much of his art collection.
- Port Lympne in Kent was Sassoon’s own idiosyncratic creation.
- Sassoon turned Trent Park in northern London into a socialite’s paradise.
- Sassoon and Churchill both worked in the Air Ministry and shared a conviction in the importance of aviation for military and civilian purposes.
- Sassoon was commanding officer of the ‘millionaires’ squadron’, a maverick group of young aristocrat pilots.
- War poet Siegfried Sassoon was Philip’s second cousin, with whom Churchill had a better relationship than Philip.
Philip was the great-grandson of the founders of both the Sassoon and Rothschild business empires.
The Sassoons were known as ‘the Rothschilds of the East’, Indo-Iraqi Jews who built up a large trading and financial services fortune, based initially in Baghdad, then Bombay and eventually London. The Rothschilds, also Jewish, were known for their banking businesses, founded in Germany by Mayer Rothschild and developed by his five sons in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Naples. With Philip’s father Edward being a Sassoon, and his mother Aline being a Rothschild, Philip inherited from both families.
Philip decided to follow in his father’s footsteps as a politician after his father’s death in 1912, succeeding him in a by-election as a Conservative MP in Hythe, Kent. At age 23, he was the youngest member of parliament at the time, the ‘Baby of the House’.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, head of the British Expeditionary Force during World War I, joked that by hiring Sassoon as his private secretary, he had attached a first-class dining car to his train. Having been born and brought up in Paris, Sassoon spoke fluent French, which greatly assisted Haig’s communications. He was present with Haig at the signing of the armistice in November 1918. He held the position of under-secretary of state for air twice, for a total of 11 years, fulfilling his responsibilities diligently. His initial appointment was partly on Churchill’s recommendation.
Philip was close to his younger sibling Sybil who married George Cholmondeley (pronounced ‘CHUM-lee’), 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, of Houghton Hall, Norfolk. Philip never married.
Although Philip’s father was active in business and Jewish affairs, Philip showed little interest in either, even though on paper he became chairman of the flagship company David Sassoon & Co. from 1928. Nor did he interact much with the wider Sassoon or Rothschild families. His main interest in his heritage was in relation to the family’s extensive art collection.
Sassoon is said to have been the first person in the UK to own a private aeroplane and the first to have a heated home swimming pool. Apart from his wealth, he was known for his hospitality, charm and striking appearance, with Charlie Chaplin describing him as ‘a picturesque personality, handsome and exotic-looking’.1
Sassoon’s house in Park Lane, Mayfair, was home to much of his art collection.
25 Park Lane was a four-storey house looking on to Hyde Park, London, completed in 1896 for Barney Barnato, Cecil Rhodes’s rival in the South African diamond mining business. Barnato drowned the year after it was finished, without living in it. It was purchased by Philip’s father, who moved in with his family and art collection when Philip was nine years old.
Philip inherited the property at age 23 upon his father’s early death at age 55, together with the lease for Trent Park in northern London, for which he then bought the freehold. He constructed another mansion near Lympne (pronounced ‘Lim’) in Kent. In 1917, he wrote, ‘I find myself the reluctant possessor of Park Lane with its leitmotif of sham Louis XVI, Lympne which is Martini tout craché [all over], and Trent which isn’t even Lincrusta when my own period is Merovingian or Boiling Oil. Le monde est toujours mal arrangé.’2
Sassoon remodelled Park Lane with the assistance of architect Philip Tilden* and added to its art over time. He held annual exhibitions there, including rare loans from other collections, causing much excitement in the art world. He was a friend and patron of the artist John Singer Sargent, who did portraits of him and his sister Sybil, as well as of Churchill and Churchill’s mother Jennie.
Sassoon was delighted to be made chairman of trustees of the National Gallery in 1932, as well as already being a trustee of the National Gallery of British Art (now the Tate) and the Wallace Collection (see Odette Pol-Roger). He was also able to use his aesthetic sense in his role as first commissioner of works in the late 1930s, shaping the development of various parks and monuments.
The 25 Park Lane property address was renumbered to 45 in 1934 and the building was demolished in the early 1960s, when the art collection was dispersed. Some of the collection can be seen at Houghton Hall in Norfolk,Sybil’s home until her death in 1989. A new building at 45 Park Lane became the site of the London Playboy Club and is now a luxury hotel.
* Churchill’s architect for his house Chartwell in Kent.
Port Lympne in Kent was Sassoon’s own idiosyncratic creation.
On his father’s death, Philip purchased an estate eight miles (13 km) west of Folkestone, Kent, overlooking the Romney Marsh. He commissioned Herbert Baker, an architect noted for his many works across the British Empire, to design a large mansion initially called Belcaire. Early construction was interrupted by World War I, after which Sassoon asked Philip Tilden to complete the task, renaming the property Port Lympne. Although today the nearby village of Lympne is 3 miles (5 km) from the sea, in Roman times its predecessor was indeed a port, although it became silted up, after which the local area was drained to form the present marshland.
Upon completion, the mansion had four reception rooms, 13 guest bedrooms with eight bathrooms, Italian terraces, a North African courtyard, two large flights of outdoor steps and two swimming pools, set in 15 acres of gardens. Various artists including Rex Whistler were commissioned to decorate the house with murals, mosaics and paintings.
As with Trent Park, it became a setting for the hosting of royalty, senior politicians, writers, musicians and many others. RAF pilots visited while participating in summer training camps at the nearby airfield. Before Chequers became available as the prime minister’s country residence in 1921, Port Lympne was sometimes used for international government meetings, including Versailles Treaty discussions in 1919.
Churchill did various paintings at Port Lympne, some of which are on display at Chartwell. Clementine also enjoyed visiting, having been an early guest in 1914 to recuperate after the birth of her daughter Sarah.
Sassoon’s playwright friend Noël Coward had a nearby country residence in Aldington called Goldenhurst Farm, part of which is now owned by comedian and novelist Julian Clary. Coward described Sassoon as ‘a phenomenon that would never recur’.3 Another Aldington neighbour was the author Joseph Conrad, whose home now belongs to comedian Vic Reeves.
On Sassoon’s death, the property passed to his cousin Hannah Gubbay and was requisitioned by the RAF in 1942 to house Free Czech troops. After falling into disuse, it was purchased in 1973 by gambling company executive John Aspinall, becoming the Port Lympne Zoo and is now the Port Lympne Hotel and Reserve.
Sassoon turned Trent Park in northern London into a socialite’s paradise.
Trent Park is a large mansion in the Cockfosters area, set in 790 acres (320 hectares) of parkland. Sassoon’s father leased the estate in 1909 from the Bevan family, founders of Barclays Bank. After inheriting it, Sassoon initially focussed on his Kent property but turned to the renovation of Trent Park with Philip Tilden in the 1920s. It is likely that Sassoon’s connection with Tilden is the reason why Churchill selected him to work on Chartwell.
Sassoon’s guests there included the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), the Churchills, Charlie Chaplin, David Lloyd George and T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’). Queen Elizabeth II visited as a child. Sports professionals would make use of the golf course and tennis courts.
Trent Park became, in the words of the politician Robert Boothby, ‘a dream of another world – the white-coated footmen serving endless courses of rich but delicious food, the Duke of York coming in from golf […] Winston Churchill arguing over the teacups with George Bernard Shaw, Lord Balfour dozing in an armchair, Rex Whistler absorbed in his painting […] while Philip himself flitted from group to group, an alert, watchful, influential but unobtrusive stage director.’4
Churchill enjoyed painting various scenes at Trent Park, particularly the grassy terrace and the Blue Room. He admired Sassoon’s black swans on the lake; Sassoon gave him two for Chartwell in 1927, then four Indian Comb ducks a few years later. Sassoon also kept flamingos, pelicans, spoonbills and a pair of king penguins.
Trent Park had a private airfield over which Philip’s ashes were scattered by plane following his death from influenza in 1939 at age 50 after ignoring his doctor’s orders to rest. The property was requisitioned shortly afterwards and used by MI19 (part of the Directorate of Military Intelligence) to hold captured Luftwaffe pilots and senior German officers. Hidden microphones picked up what the pilots and officers discussed amongst themselves.
After the war, the house and other buildings formed one of the campuses of what would become Middlesex University, and the grounds became Trent Country Park in 1973. The campus was purchased in 2015 for redevelopment into residences and a museum focussing on the site’s World War II activities.
Sassoon and Churchill both worked in the Air Ministry and shared a conviction in the importance of aviation for military and civilian purposes.
The Air Ministry was created in 1919 to manage the Royal Air Force, with Churchill as its first secretary of state for just over two years. As the ministry’s second-in-command, Sassoon inspected British air stations in India and the Middle East in 1928, which he visited in a flying boat, a Blackburn Iris, covering 17,000 miles and 25 air bases. The main objective was to test the aircraft for use in a commercial network across the British empire. He wrote a book about the trip called The Third Route (1929).
Sassoon met Lawrence of Arabia in remote India, ten miles from the Afghan border, living contentedly in remote obscurity as an aircraftman, the lowest rank in the RAF. As an author himself, Lawrence provided Sassoon with some constructive comments on a draft of The Third Route.
Sassoon and Churchill both took flying lessons. Like Churchill, Sassoon was not a good pilot but, unlike Churchill, managed to qualify, albeit after double the usual number of hours. When asked how Sassoon was getting on, his instructor said he was not teaching him to fly, only to land. Nevertheless, Sassoon managed to crash into a hedge while landing, escaping injury but writing off the aircraft. Similarly, Churchill had a bad crash but walked away without serious injury.
Sassoon owned various aircraft, each of which had a cobra figurine (as did his cars), a motif which was never explained but was perhaps a vestige of his family background in India. His local Lympne airfield was a thriving base for light aircraft, providing pilot training and hosting air races. It was also the home of the Cinque Ports Flying Club, of which Noël Coward was president in the mid-1930s. It was discontinued as an airfield in 1984 and is now an industrial site.
Although he was anti-Nazi and supportive of RAF reinforcement, Sassoon applauded Chamberlain’s attempt in 1939 to make peace with Hitler. It is unknown whether Sassoon would have retracted this if he had lived beyond 1939.
His sister Sybil played a leading role in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the ‘Wrens’) as chief staff officer to the director, Vera Laughton Mathews, and became the organisation’s second-in-command in 1946.
Sassoon was commanding officer of the ‘millionaires’ squadron’, a maverick group of young aristocrat pilots.
No. 601 was an RAF Reserve squadron formed in 1925 by Edward Grosvenor, the youngest son of Hugh, 1st Duke of Westminster, and uncle of Hugh, 2nd Duke of Westminster, Churchill’s cousin (see Coco Chanel). He selected a group of officers on the basis of their family background, financial means and overall demeanour. During selection, he plied them with alcohol to see if they could still behave with good judgement with their guard lowered. Most of them owned their own aircraft.
Grosvenor died aged 36 in 1929 after a short illness. Sassoon became the squadron’s commanding officer (‘CO’) until being reappointed to government office in 1931, when he was made the squadron’s honorary air commodore. A subsequent CO was Max Aitken, son of Lord Beaverbrook.
The officers of 601 ignored various RAF regulations, wearing red socks, jackets lined with red silk and non-conforming ties. They drove fast luxury cars, played polo on motorbikes and undertook pranks in their aircraft which would normally have resulted in dismissal if they did not have Sassoon’s political protection and the excuse of personal ownership of the planes. This eccentric style was replaced by a more standard approach after World War II started, not least due to the deaths in combat of 11 of the original 20 members.
601 squadron aircraft and pilots were also put to general use. Sassoon would often call his colleagues and ask them to ferry VIPs around for business or personal purposes. Churchill was a beneficiary of this on some of his journeys to and from France.
In August 1930, Sassoon arranged an outing from Lympne airfield for Winston, Clementine, Tom Mitford (Clementine’s cousin), Lawrence of Arabia and three others. They flew in seven aircraft in formation from Kent to Hampshire to visit Tom’s sister Diana Guinness (later Diana Mosley; see UK fascist groups), although the formation was a bit ragged due to Lawrence’s request to his pilot to fly lower and Churchill’s insistence on his pilot flying higher. On another occasion, Clementine wrote to Winston from Chartwell to say that she was dining at Port Lympne that day and that ‘Philip is sending his aeroplane’.5
War poet Siegfried Sassoon was Philip’s second cousin, with whom Churchill had a better relationship than Philip.
Philip and Siegfried shared the same great-grandparent, David Sassoon, founder of David Sassoon & Co., with Siegfried being two years older than Philip. Philip’s role as private secretary to General Haig during World War I was at a time when Siegfried was gaining attention for criticising the handling of the war. In 1917, Siegfried wrote to his commanding officer, refusing to continue as a combatant, saying that ‘I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed’.6
The letter was published in the press and read out in the House of Commons. Rather than being court-martialled, Siegfried was consigned to a mental hospital for shell shock. In 1918, Philip wrote to the influential Lord Esher, distancing himself from Siegfried, saying, ‘My Wagnerian antonym is a distant relation, the grandson of an old aunt of my father’s. I have never seen him.’7
Philip and Siegfried did not meet until introduced briefly in 1925, when Siegfried’s first impression was that ‘He looks a bit of a bounder, but has a remarkable face’.8 A second meeting over dinner was a tense affair, but a further encounter in 1933 went better than expected, and Siegfried had a few friendly meetings with Sybil during World War II.
Churchill knew Counter-Attack (1918) by heart, Siegfried’s second collection of anti-war poems, and often quoted from it. He admired Siegfried’s bravery, recognised by the award of the Military Cross, as well as his way with words. He wanted to approach him to work in the ministry of munitions but was warned, probably by his brother Jack, that ‘He might start writing a poem about you’. ‘I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon’, replied Winston. ‘That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think.’9
Churchill and Siegfried met in October 1918 and Churchill expressed his admiration for Sassoon’s work and made a job offer. However, it became lost in a Churchillian monologue. They met again at a party a month later, but neither of them pursued the possibility of employment. Siegfried became an editor and novelist, living to the age of 80. He is buried in the same graveyard as Violet Bonham Carter in Mells, Somerset.
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Politician, art collector, socialite |
| Country | France and UK. UK citizen from age 19. |
| Career | Conservative MP for Hythe, Kent (1912-39). 2nd Lieutenant, East Kent Yeomanry (1914). Private secretary to Field Marshal Haig (1915-18) and David Lloyd George (1920-22). Trustee, the National Museum, now the Tate (1923). Knighted (1923). Under-Secretary of State for Air (1924-29, 1931-37). Chairman, David Sassoon & Co. (1928-1939). Commanding Officer (1929-31), RAF 601 Squadron. Honorary Air Commodore, RAF 601 Squadron (1931-39). Chairman of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery (1932-36). First Commissioner of Works (1937-39), now part of Department of the Environment. |
| Born | 1888 in his mother’s mansion in Avenue de Marigny, Paris (14 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | Edward Sassoon (1856-1912), businessman and politician; grandson of David Sassoon, founder of trading house David Sassoon & Co.; died age 55 |
| Mother | Aline de Rothschild (1867-1909), daughter of Gustave de Rothschild, French banker (son of James/Jakob, youngest child of banking founder Mayer Rothschild) |
| Siblings | Elder of two children: 1. Philip Albert Gustave David (1888-1939) 2. Sybil (1894-1989); married George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, army officer and Lord Great Chamberlain; 3 children; family seats Houghton Hall, Norfolk, and Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire |
| Education | Farnborough preparatory school; Eton College; Christ Church, Oxford University (Modern History) |
| Spouse | – |
| Relationships | Unclear |
| Children | – |
| Died | 1939 at 45 Park Lane, London (number 25 until 1934), aged 50 (26 years before Churchill); complications from influenza |
| Buried | Ashes scattered by plane over airfield at Trent House, Cockfosters, north London |
| Chartwell | |
| Other Club | – |
| Nickname | – |
| Height |
4. See also
Royal Air Force
- Rothermere, Lord (Harold Harmsworth)
- Smuts, Jan
Churchill’s entertainment at English country houses and overseas villas
- Beaverbrook, Lord (Max Aitken)
- Camrose, Lord (William Berry)
- Elliott, Maxine
- Plowden, Pamela
5. Further reading
Philip Sassoon and family
- Collins, Damian, Charmed Life: The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon (HarperCollins, 2016)
- Egremont, Max, Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography (Pan Macmillan, 2014)
- Sassoon, Joseph, The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty (Allen Lane, 2022)
- Stansky, Peter, Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil (Yale University Press, 2003)
Cholmondeley family
- Houghton Hall, ‘History’ (www.houghtonhall.com)
- Society for Italic Handwriting, ‘Presidents Past and Present’ (italic-handwriting.org)
Sassoon and Churchill
- Glueckstein, Fred, ‘Philip Sassoon – A Friend at the End of an Era’ (The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2020)
601 Squadron
- 601 (County of London) Squadron, ‘Thynne 1929-33’ (601squadron.com)
- Moulson, Tom, The Millionaires’ Squadron: The Remarkable Story of 601 Squadron and the Flying Sword (Pen & Sword Books, 1964, 2014)
Trent Park
- Trent Park, ‘Hidden Histories’, trentparkhouse.org.uk
- Trent Park, ‘Secret Listeners’, trentparkhouse.org.uk
Miscellaneous
- Sassoon, Philip, The Third Route (Literary Licensing, 1929)
6. References
1. Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (Penguin UK, 2003), p. 276.
2. Peter Stansky, Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil (Yale University Press, 2003), p. 75.
3. Cole Lesley, Remembered Laughter: The Life of Noel Coward (Knopf, 1976), p. 197.
4. Robert J.G. Boothby, I Fight to Live (V. Gollancz, 1947), p. 50.
5. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. [000].
6. Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration’, Wikisource, 1917.
7. Quoted in Stansky, p. 155.
8. Quoted in Stansky, p. 81.
9. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 4: The Stricken World, 1916–1922 (Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p. 140.