Frederick Ponsonby, 1st Baron Sysonby

Frederick Edward Grey Ponsonby, 1st Baron Sysonby GCB GCVO PC (16 September 1867 – 20 October 1935), was a British soldier and courtier.

Ponsonby was the second son of General Sir Henry Ponsonby and his wife the Hon. Mary Elizabeth (née Bulteel). A member of a junior branch of the Ponsonby family, he was the grandson of General Sir Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby and the great-grandson of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough. Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was his younger brother. Ponsonby was a Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel in the Grenadier Guards and served in the Second Boer War and in the First World War. He wrote the standard history: The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914-1918. 3 vols. Published in 1920.

He also held several court positions, notably as Equerry-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria from 1894 to 1901, as Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse and Assistant Private Secretary to Queen Victoria from 1897 to 1901 and to Edward VII from 1901 to 1910; as Keeper of the Privy Purse for George V from 1914 to 1935, and as Lieutenant-Governor of Windsor Castle from 1928 to 1935. Already a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO), he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in the 1921 New Year Honours. In 1935 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sysonby, of Wonersh in the County of Surrey.

Lord Sysonby married Victoria Lily, daughter of Colonel Edmund Hegan Kennard, on 17 May 1899. They had three children:


 * Victor Alexander Henry Desmond Ponsonby (19 June 1900–24 November 1900)
 * Hon. Loelia Mary Ponsonby (1902–1993)
 * Hon. Edward Gaspard Ponsonby (1903–1956)

Lord Sysonby died in London in October 1935, aged 68, only four months after his elevation to the peerage, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. He was succeeded in the barony by his surviving son Edward. Lady Sysonby died in 1955.

His autobiography Recollections of Three Reigns is full, frank and entertaining. Nancy Mitford wrote to Evelyn Waugh that there was "a shriek on every page".

Family
The Ponsonby family has played a leading role in British life for two centuries. His father was the Sir Henry Ponsonby - memorably played by Geoffrey Palmer in the film 'Mrs. Brown' - who was Private Secretary to Queen Victoria. His grandfather was badly wounded at the Battle of Waterloo, but survived to become General Sir Frederick Ponsonby. Lady Caroline, better known to history under her married name of Lady Caroline Lamb, was the wife of the future Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and lover of the poet Lord Byron. This lady was also a key figure in a film - played by Sarah Miles - in 1972. The father of the two siblings, Frederick's great-grandfather, was the 3rd Earl of Bessborough. The man wounded at Waterloo is not to be confused with another Ponsonby depicted on film, his kinsman General Sir William Ponsonby, whose death - possibly due to not risking his best horse in battle - at the hands of a group of lancers is an incident noted in the film 'Waterloo'. Frederick's daughter, Loelia, married the 2nd Duke of Westminster, before re-marrying, after the Second World War, to become the alliterative Lady Loelia Lindsay.