(Charles Randolph) Mark Ogilvie-Grant was born on 15 March 1905, the first son of ornithologist
William Robert Ogilvie-Grant and Maud Louisa Pechell, daughter of Admiral
Mark Robert Pechell. With them he was an early member of the
Bright Young Things. He then moved to
Trinity College, Oxford, At Oxford Ogilvie-Grant was part of the Railway Club, which included:
Henry Yorke,
Roy Harrod,
Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath,
David Plunket Greene,
Edward Henry Charles James Fox-Strangways, 7th Earl of Ilchester,
Brian Howard,
Michael Parsons, 6th Earl of Rosse,
John Sutro,
Hugh Lygon,
Harold Acton,
Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne,
Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross, and
John Drury-Lowe. He was a member of the "Georgeoisie" with
Alan Pryce-Jones, a group of students who dined every night at the George restaurant. He graduated in 1929 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) became a frequent guest at Mitford's family house at
Swinbrook and he inspired the character of Sir Ivor King in the 1940 novel
Pigeon Pie. He did also the portrait of
Brian Howard which appeared in the
Cherwell in 1927. and they lived together. In the winter of 1926–1927,
Evelyn Waugh visited them (he was a very close friend of Graham) and he was "disgusted by the life they led in Greece". In 1929 he was transferred in Cairo, Egypt, with Graham and Vivian Cornelius. In 1933
Patrick Leigh Fermor walked by foot from London to Constantinople, he carried with him Ogilvie-Grant's rucksack that he used when, with
David Talbot Rice and
Robert Byron, they went on a trip to Mt. Athos, later described by Byron in
The Station (1928). For Fermor the rucksack, "weathered and faded by Macedonian suns," was a valuable relic, "rife with mana." Mark Ogilvie-Grant was also a botanist and in 1940 he contributed an essay,
Plants and Western Crete to
New Flora and Silva by Evan Hillhouse Methven Cox. His love of plants may in part have been inherited from his father, who worked in the Botany Department of the
Natural History Museum. During
World War II, Mark Ogilvie-Grant was a Captain in the
Scots Guards and was recruited by Brigadier
Dudley Clarke to be part of the
"A" Force, a deception department set up in Cairo in March 1941. After leaving the "A" Force, he was secretly infiltrated into enemy-occupied Greece. He was taken off Greece by boat and returned by submarine in September 1941. Among other 200 evaders in the Taygetos, he lived under conditions of semi-starvation while trying to escape through the mountains, walking under the hot Grecian sun by day and in freezing conditions by night. Around 1943 he was again prisoner of a War Camp in Austria, and escaped again. He was recaptured after three weeks and transferred in a prisoners camp in Germany. From 1947 to 1969 he was with the Information Department at the Greek Embassy in London. He spent his last years at 71 Kew Green, Kew, a place he called Vocal Lodge, and where Nancy Mitford was often a guest and where she worked on the script of the
Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Mark Ogilvie-Grant died on 13 February 1969. ==References==