Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, 2nd Baron Hesketh

Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, 2nd Baron Hesketh DL, was a British peer and soldier.

Background and education

Hesketh was the son of Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 1st Baron Hesketh, and Florence Louise Breckinridge, of Kentucky, daughter of John Witherspoon Breckinridge, and granddaughter of General John C. Breckinridge, Vice-President of the United States of America and Secretary of War for the Confederate States of America, in 1909. He was educated from 1926 at Eton and later Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Military service

Hesketh was a major in the Scots Guards. He succeeded in the barony on the death of his father on 20 July 1944. In 1950 he became a Deputy Lieutenant of Northamptonshire.

Family life

On 22 November 1949 he married Christian Mary McEwen, daughter of Captain Sir John Helias Finnie McEwen and had three children:

Hesketh was a collector of top-end books in the early 1950s. The trustees of his will sold some of his books, manuscripts and letters in 2010 at Sotheby's. The four volumes of John James Audubon's Birds of America were bought by renowned London book dealer Michael Tollemache for a record £7,321,250.