Hugh Massingberd

Hugh John Massingberd (30 December 1946 – 25 December 2007), originally Hugh John Montgomery and known from 1963 to 1992 as Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, was an English journalist and genealogist. He began his career at Burke's Peerage/Burke's Landed Gentry, serving as its chief editor from 1971 to 1983. However, he was most revered for his subsequent work as obituaries editor for The Daily Telegraph of London from 1986 to 1994, where he is credited with inventing the modern British obituary, exchanging the dry recital of biographical data for a more stylish, sly, and witty narrative of the deceased person's life.

Hugh John Montgomery was born at Cookham Dean, Berkshire, on 30 December 1946, son of John Michael Montgomery, a member of the Colonial Service, and schoolmistress Marsali, daughter of stockjobber Francis Joseph Seal. She married John Montgomery after the death of her first husband, Roger de Winton Kelsall Winlaw, in 1942 on active service in the Royal Air Force. Hugh was the first child of her marriage to John Montgomery. Through his father, Hugh Massingberd was a great-grandson of women's-rights pioneer Emily Langton Massingberd. He was a great-great-grandson of Charlotte Langton (born Wedgwood) who was herself a granddaughter of the potter and philanthropist Josiah Wedgwood and a sister of Emma Wedgwood, wife of Charles Darwin.

His boyhood enthusiasms included cricket, reading, horseracing, and showbusiness.

His father was the son of a brother of Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd of Gunby Hall, Lincolnshire, while his mother was the sister of the Field Marshal's wife, Diana. To inherit their estate, in 1963 John and his son Hugh were obliged to adopt the name of Massingberd, and both decided to become Montgomery-Massingberds. However, in 1992 Hugh abandoned his original surname and thereafter was known simply as Hugh Massingberd.

After leaving school, he worked for three years as an articled law clerk, before gaining a place at Cambridge University to read history. He then "drifted into publishing and journalism".

He was extremely proud of his reputation as a gourmand and a trencherman, posing at one time for a portrait with a garland of sausages. Often retold was the story of his having eaten the largest breakfast ever served at The Connaught hotel in 1972; the head waiter reported to his table that the previous record holder had been King Farouk I of Egypt. It is said that as the waiter recited the various items available on the menu, Massingberd simply nodded throughout.

In 1972 Massingberd married Christine Martinoni, with whom he had a daughter, Harriet, and a son, Luke. They were divorced in 1979 and he married, secondly, Caroline Ripley in 1983. Massingberd was known for his wit in his private life as well as in his public life as a writer. A friend once asked him, during one of Massingberd's low moods, what would cheer him up; after some thought, Massingberd replied, "To sing patriotic songs in drag before an appreciative audience."

Massingberd was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and died in London on Christmas Day, 2007, five days before his 61st birthday.