Mark Bence-Jones

Mark Adayre Bence-Jones (29 May 1930 – 12 April 2010) was a writer, noted mainly for his books on Irish architecture, the British aristocracy and the British Raj. He regarded himself as being both Irish and English, seeing no contradiction in these statements of nationality. Life and works Early life Bence-Jones was the son of Colonel Philip Reginald Bence-Jones who was the head of an engineering school in Lahore, India. His mother was half-French and half-English, and had been brought up in Alexandria, Egypt. Bence-Jones was born in London, in 1930, but most of his childhood was spent in India, and plans for his education in England were curtailed by the outbreak of World War II. Following the war, the family moved to Ireland, from where they had originally come, the ancestral home had been Lisselane in County Cork, which had left family ownership in the early 1930s. They bought a decaying country house called Glenville Park, located near Cork City.