FAMOUS DE BEERS IN ENGLAND

Surfing through the internet for other De Beers on the globe, I came accros the name of this very interesting historian and philosopher in London at:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=23279403

Esmond de Beer was born in Dunedin on 15 September 1895 into the great mercantile family of Hallensteins. In 1910 the de Beer family moved to London when his father, Isidore, was appointed to run the Hallensteins London office.

His two elder sisters, Mary and Dora, moved permanently to London after the death of their mother, Emily, in Dunedin in 1930 and Isidore in London in 1934. They set up house with de Beer first at 11 Sussex Place and then from 1964 at 31 Brompton Square. They lived together harmoniously and mutually supportively until both sisters died within a month of each other in the early nineteen-eighties. His elder brother, Bendix, was killed in action in Belgium in 1917. Charles Brasch, New Zealand poet and long-time editor of Landfall, was a cousin and close friend.

De Beer developed an early passion for books and reading and was exposed to rare and beautiful books from an early age. At Mill Hill School, North London, he won prizes for French, German, General knowledge and Essay. Throughout his life, his relationship with his immediate and extended family remained remarkably close. In 1914 de Beer went up to New College, Oxford, and spent two years studying history under his mentor and exemplar, Sir Charles Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History. In 1916 he joined the army and received a temporary commission in the Indian Army. After being awarded a B.A. War Degree from Oxford, he continued his studies at University College, London, and the Institute of Historical Research. He was awarded a M.A. in 1923 and then moved to Oxford to become Sir Charles's voluntary assistant. In 1929 he began work on the first complete edition of the diary of John Evelyn.After the death of his sisters, de Beer decided that the great house at Brompton Square must be given up and its treasures were dispersed, most of them to Dunedin. In 1982 he moved to a flat in St. John's Wood but he found the activities of daily life increasingly difficult to manage. In 1984 he moved to Stoke House, a residential home for the elderly in Buckinghamshire. He was by then virtually blind and deaf and suffering from Parkinson's disease. He died on 3 October 1990.