Peter Rodd

Hon. Peter Murray Rennell Rodd (16 April 1904 – 17 July 1968), soldier, aid worker, film-maker and idler, was the second son of Sir Rennell Rodd, a diplomat and politician who was ennobled in 1933 as Baron Rennell. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford.

Rodd was married to the novelist and socialite Nancy Mitford from 1933 until their divorce in 1957, although by then the marriage had been over in all but name for some years. Nancy's family nicknamed him "Prodd" or "the old toll-gater", from his skill at talking at great length on historical subjects such as turnpike roads.

Rodd followed no specific career and his views were erratic and changeable; having joined the British Union of Fascists in 1933, by the following year he was fiercely denouncing the movement. In 1938 he carried out humanitarian work in Perpignan on behalf of refugees from the Spanish Civil War. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards in 1939, and during a varied war career saw service in Africa and Italy, attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. After the war he attempted unsuccessfully to become a film-maker; his one completed project, For Whom the Gate Tolls, shot in Spain, was a failure. Other than this, for the remainder of his years he lived a more or less idle life, mainly on handouts, mostly in Rome and finally in Malta, where he died in 1968.