Thursday 9 April 2015

Found Prose Poem: Cameron and His Origins

[from wikipedia]

David Cameron is the younger son of stockbroker Ian Donald Cameron (12 October 1932 – 8 September 2010) and his wife Mary Fleur (née Mount, born 1934,[6] a retired Justice of the Peace, daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet).[7]Cameron's parents were married on 20 October 1962.[6]

Cameron was born in London and brought up in Peasemore, Berkshire.[8] Cameron has a brother, Alexander Allan(born 1963, a barrister and QC)[9] and two sisters, Tania Rachel (born 1965) and Clare Louise (born 1971).[10][6] His father, Ian, was born at Blairmore House, a country house near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and died near Toulon, in France, on 8 September 2010;[11] Ian was born with both legs deformed and underwent repeated operations to correct them. Blairmore was built by Cameron's great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes,[12] who had made a fortune in the graintrade in Chicago and returned to Scotland in the 1880s.[13]

Through his paternal grandmother, Enid Agnes Maud Levita, Cameron is a lineal descendant of King William IV by his mistress Dorothea Jordan. This illegitimate line consists of five generations of women starting with Elizabeth Hay, Countess of Erroll, née FitzClarence, William and Jordan's sixth child,[14] through to Cameron's grandmother (thereby making Cameron a 5th cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II).[15]

In the 1830s Cameron's first cousin six times removed was compensated with £4,101 for 202 slaves when they were liberated by Parliament.[16] Cameron's paternal forebears also have a long history in finance. His father Ian was senior partner of the stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, in which firm partnerships had long been held by Cameron's ancestors, including David's grandfather and great-grandfather,[10] and was a Director of estate agent John D. Wood. David Cameron's great-great-grandfather Emile Levita was a German Jewish financier and a direct descendant of Renaissance scholar Elia Levita, the author of Bovo-Bukh, the first secular work ever published in Yiddish. Emile Levita obtained British citizenship in 1871 and was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969.[15] Through Levita, Cameron is a descendent of the Levites, who themselves claim to be descended fromMoses.[15] His wife, Cameron's great-great-grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family on her father's side.[17][18]

One of Emile's sons, Arthur Francis Levita (died 1910, brother of Sir Cecil Levita),[19] of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers, together with great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron,[20] London head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, played key roles in arranging loans supplied by the Rothschilds to the Japanese Central Banker (later Prime Minister) Takahashi Korekiyo for the financing of the Japanese Government in the Russo-Japanese war.[21]

Cameron's maternal grandfather was Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet, an Army officer who served as High Sheriff of Berkshire, and Cameron's maternal great-grandfather was Sir William Mount, 1st Baronet, CBE, Conservative MP for Newbury 1918–1922. Cameron's great-great-grandmother was Lady Ida Matilda Alice Feilding. His great-great-great-grandfather was William Feilding, 7th Earl of Denbigh, GCH, PC, a courtier and Gentleman of the Bedchamber.[22] His mother's cousin, Sir Ferdinand Mount, was head of 10 Downing Street's Policy Unit in the early 1980s. Cameron is the nephew of Sir William Dugdale, brother-in-law of Katherine, Lady Dugdale (died 2004) Lady-in-Waiting to HM The Queen since 1955,[23][24] and former Chairman ofAston Villa Football Club. Birmingham-born documentary filmmaker Joshua Dugdale is his cousin.[25]

Cameron has said: "On my mother's side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh. I'm a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh and English".[26]