, 1927
Military career Percy was a
second lieutenant of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion
the Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment), when he was admitted as a second lieutenant in the
Grenadier Guards on 24 January 1900. He was part of a detachment sent to South Africa in March 1900 to reinforce the 3rd battalion during the
Second Boer War, and served with his regiment there until the war ended. For his service, he received the
Queen's South Africa Medal. Following the end of the war, he returned to the United Kingdom in August 1902. During his time as ADC to the Governor General of Canada, he undertook a wager to walk 111 miles from one city to another in three days—despite blizzards and heavy snowfall, he completed the challenge and won the wager. During the
First World War he served with the Grenadier Guards, working with the Intelligence Department to provide eyewitness accounts of battles and the front line. His brother Lord William Percy also served during the war; wounded in 1915, he spent the remainder of the war working as a military attorney. He was made a Chevalier of the ''
Légion d'honneur''. On 1 October 1918 he was appointed
Honorary Colonel of the
3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment).
Political activities Politically Percy was a Tory
diehard. He was a staunch supporter of the
House of Lords. He wrote for the
National Review on military matters. From 1921, he funded the Boswell Publishing Company, and then in 1922 until his death, the
Patriot, a radical right-wing weekly which published articles by
Nesta Webster and promulgated a mix of
anti-communism and
antisemitism. In 1924, he acquired an interest in
The Morning Post.
Other activities The Duke was appointed
Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland. For one year before his death, he served as
Chancellor of the
University of Durham, a role his father had also held. His father, the 7th Duke, was an
alderman on the
Middlesex County Council up to his death. In July 1918, he was chosen to fill the vacancy on the council in his father's place. In 1930, the Duke wrote a short story
The Shadow on the Moor, a fox-hunting ghost story in the manner of
M R James set in Northumberland, in which the hunter becomes the hunted. Originally privately published, the story remains in print as a short novella. ==Personal life==