Edward Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet (20 March 1879 – 11 July 1960) was a British politician and writer.
Family and early life Young was the youngest son of Sir George Young, 3rd Baronet (see Young baronets), a noted classicist and charity commissioner.Williams, B. (1937) entry on Young, Sir George, Dictionary of National Biography, 1922–30, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 926–8. Sir George's paternal great-grandmother was Emily Baring of the eponymous merchant banking dynasty.Hall, S.M. (2006), Before Leonard: The Early Suitors of Virginia Woolf, London: Peter Owen, p.244, Hilton's mother, formerly Alice Eacy Kennedy, was of Dublin Irish Protestant background and had previously lived in India as Lady Lawrence, wife of Sir Alexander Lawrence, Bt, nephew to the Viceroy, Lord Lawrence. Widowed when Sir Alexander died in a bridge collapse, Alice returned to England, marrying Sir George in 1871.Williams (1937), p.928. Hilton was the youngest of three sons and one daughter (who died aged 14) born to the couple. The oldest brother, also George, would become a diplomat and Ottoman scholar. The next brother, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, became a noted educator and mountaineer. Their childhood was spent at the family's Thames-side 'Formosa' estate, at Cookham, Berkshire. On visits to their London house near Sloane Square, Hilton would often play in Kensington Gardens with the children of Sir George's friend, Sir Leslie Stephen.Young, E.H. (c.1959), In and Out, unpublished autobiography, Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts Department, Kennet Papers (KP 82/1), p. 22. In this way, he commenced a close friendship with his contemporary Thoby Stephen, and became acquainted with Thoby's siblings, Vanessa, Virginia, and Adrian.
At his preparatory school, Northaw Place, in 1892 Young took pity on nine-year-old Clement Attlee on the latter's first day at school, offering the newcomer jam from his own pot.Harris, K. (1982), Attlee, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p.8. His secondary schooling commenced at Marlborough but incessant bullying saw him transferred to Eton where he joined the army stream which emphasised science rather than the classics. After two terms studying chemistry at University College London, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1897, graduating in 1900 with a 'first' in natural sciences and having achieved the office of president of the Union Society.Young, W. (1971), entry on Young, Edward Hilton, Dictionary of National Biography, 1951–1960, London: Oxford University Press, p. 1088.
Early career Post-Cambridge he read for the Bar and was called by the Inner Temple in 1904. However, after receiving few briefs and suffering a nervous breakdown, he transferred to financial journalism. In 1908, he was appointed assistant editor of The Economist, resigning in 1910 to become city editor of The Morning Post. His 1912 work Foreign Companies and Other Corporations combined his legal and financial knowledge to examine the status of companies created in one national jurisdiction which operate in other jurisdictions.Young, E.H. (1912), Foreign Companies and Other Corporations, London: Cambridge University Press.
At Cambridge, through Thoby Stephen, he became acquainted with key members of what would become known as the ‘Bloomsbury group’. He attended the group's early gatherings at Gordon Square and Fitzroy Square, and became attracted to Virginia Stephen, to whom he proposed on a punt on the Cam in May 1909, only to be rejected.Bell, Q. (1976), Virginia Woolf: a Biography (Vol. 1), London: Triad/Granada, p. 144. Another Cambridge friendship, made through his brother Geoffrey, was with G. M. Trevelyan and in Spring 1906 he accompanied the historian during a retracement of the route of Garibaldi's retreat which became the basis for Trevelyan's Garibaldi trilogy.Trevelyan, G.M. (1949), An Autobiography and Other Essays, London: Longmans, Green, p. 31. The second work in the trilogy—Garibaldi and the Thousand—was dedicated to the Young brothers and contained 15 photographs taken by Hilton.Trevelyan, G.M. (1909), Garibaldi and the Thousand, London: Longmans, Green, List of plates, pp. xiii–xv.
First World War Enlisting in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on 22 August 1914 and commissioned in September, he served in a wide variety of theatres and actions in the First World War, including the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow.Young, E.H. (1920), By Sea and Land, London: Jack.
He served on HMS Cyclops then from September 1914. That autumn he wrote to his brother that it was “really rather wonderful” to be serving on Admiral Jellicoe's flagship. In a letter in October he mentioned a sailors’ entertainment for “the admiral’s” benefit including some sailors dancing the can-can. However, by February 1915 he was chafing at the “inoccupation” of the Grand Fleet, in the absence of any major sea battle.Wilson, Trevor (1986, reprinted 2010), The Myriad Faces of War, London: Faber & Faber, , pp. 75−6.
A literary consequence of his war service was A Muse at Sea, a compilation of his poems initially published in the Ducal Weekly (the Iron Duke'''s newspaper), and also in the Morning Post, the Cornhill Magazine and the Nation.Young, E.H. (1919), A Muse at Sea, London: Sidgwick & Jackson. He also rendered other types of service to his friends Lytton Strachey and Clive Bell during the War. In 1908 he had bought a thatched cottage for weekend use, The Lacket,Holroyd, M. (1995), Lytton Strachey, London: Vintage, ch.XI. at Lockeridge near Marlborough. During 1914–15 he rented the cottage to Strachey who drafted the first two chapters of his Eminent Victorians there.Bell to Young, 6 June 1916, Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts Department, Kennet Papers (KP 5/2).
While on active service on Iron Duke, in February 1915 he was elected unopposed as a Liberal MP at a by-election for the seat of Norwich.
In April 1915, he received a letter from Vanessa Bell, in response to his request for a letter making no mention of the war, telling him of the doings of the Bloomsbury Set, including “Bertie” Russell, Lytton Strachey and Ottoline Morrell.Wilson, Trevor (1986, reprinted 2010), The Myriad Faces of War, London: Faber & Faber, p. 165. In May 1915, while still serving on HMS Iron Duke, the first edition of his System of National Finance appeared.Young, E.H. (1915), The System of National Finance, London: Smith, Elder (1st ed.) 2nd and 3rd editions, John Murray, 1924, 1936. Through further editions in 1924 and 1936, it remained the standard work on Westminster's budgetary processes until well into the 1950s.Burrows, G. and B. Syme, (2000), Zero-base budgeting: origins and pioneers, Abacus, 36(2): 226–41.
In September 1915, he took part Admiral Troubridge's mission to the Danube, whose aim was to stop the Austro-Hungarians sending supplies via the Black Sea to Gallipoli (in the absence of a direct land link, as Bulgaria did not join the Central Powers until October). The following month he heard his first shot fired in anger when an Austrian sentry fired a rifle at his ship.
Later in the war, Young served on Harwich light cruisers, naval siege guns at Flanders, the Zeebrugge Raid in which, commanding a rear gun on , he was severely wounded, necessitating the amputation of his right arm, and, finally, in the Russian campaign, commanding an armoured train on the line south of Archangel.
His war service brought the awards of the Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Service Cross and Bar, French Croix de guerre, and the Serbian Silver Medal.Young, W. (1971), p. 1088. He recounted his war experiences in his 1920 memoir, By Sea and Land.
Post-war career Post-war, he started his rise up the political ladder in February 1919 when he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education.The Times, 20 July 1960, p. 15, col. a. In April 1921, he was promoted to Financial Secretary to the Treasury. In this capacity, he was the link between the government and the 'Geddes Axe', the committee of business experts established by Lloyd George in the aftermath of the First World War to undertake a fundamental review of government expenditure in the hope of identifying major savings.Burrows, G., and Cobbin. P. (2009), Controlling government expenditure by external review: the 1921–2 "Geddes Axe", Accounting History, 14: 199–220.
In March 1922, Young married sculptor Kathleen Scott, née Bruce, widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott.Young, L. (1995), A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott, London: Macmillan, p. 207. With the marriage, he became stepfather to Kathleen's son, the future naturalist and yachtsman, Peter Scott. In August 1923, Kathleen gave birth, aged 45, to their son Wayland Young, who became a writer and Labour politician.Young (1995), A Great Task of Happiness, p. 214.
Through Cambridge and Bloomsbury, Young had a long-standing friendship with E. M. Forster. Suffering writer's block while working on A Passage to India, the novelist was Young's guest at The Lacket in early May 1922. Shortly afterwards he wrote to Young declaring, "an unfinished novel’s before me now, and sometimes I work at it with distaste and despair…You certainly have done more than any individual I know to help me by direct remarks. Your knowledge of the business of creating seemed to me profounder than that possessed by so-called artists."Forster to Young, 10 May 1922, Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts Department, Kennet Papers (KP 28/10). These comments suggest that Young gave Forster significant advice and encouragement at a crucial stage on work on the latter's eventual masterpiece.
Out of office with the advent of Bonar Law's Conservative administration (following the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922), he became Chief Whip for the Lloyd George Liberals and a Privy Counsellor. Speaking at the Gresham's School prize-giving on 13 July 1923, Young "...recommended the boys to go in for great risks and dangerous deeds. Let them have adventure, and the madder the adventure, the better."The Times, 16 July 1923; Issue 43394; p. 9; col E. He lost his Norwich seat at the December 1923 General Election. Although he won the seat back at the October 1924 General Election, he devoted the rest of the 1920s to furthering his business interests.