Alexander Nelson Hood, 4th Viscount Bridport, 7th Duke of Bronte [a] (born 17 March 1948), known as Alex Bridport, is a British investment banker, resident in Geneva, Switzerland. [1]
Alexander Nelson Hood, 4th Viscount Bridport, 7th Duke of Bronte [a] (born 17 March 1948), known as Alex Bridport, is a British investment banker, resident in Geneva, Switzerland. [1]
He is the only son and heir of Rowland Hood, 3rd Viscount Bridport, 6th Duke of Bronte (1911–1969), of Castello di Maniace [2] near Bronte in Sicily (a descendant of William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson, 2nd Duke of Bronte, elder brother and heir of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte), by his second wife Sheila Jeanne Agatha van Meurs, only daughter of Johan Hendrik van Meurs and widow of Wing-Commander J. H. Little, DFC, Auxiliary Air Force. [3]
He grew up in the Castello di Maniace, Sicily, and was educated at Eton College and the Sorbonne. He joined Kleinwort Benson merchant bank in London, before going on to Chase Manhattan Bank which sent him to Geneva in 1985 to be General Manager of Investment Banking. He was appointed managing director of Shearson Lehman Brothers, New York, in 1988. In 1991 he set up Bridport & Cie S.A. in Geneva, Switzerland, with Thomas Bartholdi, and both remain managing partners, together with Count Luca Padulli. [4] In 1981, facing an on-going turbulent political situation in Italy and the prospect of further demands for land reform from an historically inimical faction of the local population, he sold his paternal estate of the Duchy of Bronte and his seat within it, the Castello di Maniace, granted to Admiral Nelson in 1799 by Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. [5]
He married twice:
She obtained a divorce in 1979 and in 1983 remarried to Michael Howard, 21st Earl of Suffolk (1935–2022) of Charlton Park, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. [7] By his first wife he had issue:
Marquess of Abergavenny in the County of Monmouth, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom created on 14 January 1876, along with the title Earl of Lewes, in the County of Sussex, for the 5th Earl of Abergavenny, a member of the Nevill family.
Earl Nelson, of Trafalgar and of Merton in the County of Surrey, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 20 November 1805 for the Rev. William Nelson, 2nd Baron Nelson, one month after the death of his younger brother Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, the famous naval hero of the Napoleonic Wars and victor of the Battle of Trafalgar of 21 October 1805. The title is extant, the present holder being Simon Nelson, 10th Earl Nelson, who has an heir apparent. The family seat of Trafalgar House in Wiltshire was sold in 1948 by Edward Nelson, 5th Earl Nelson.
Earl of Selborne, in the County of Southampton, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1882 for the lawyer and Liberal politician Roundell Palmer, 1st Baron Selborne, along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Wolmer, of Blackmoor in the County of Southampton. He had already been made Baron Selborne, of Selborne in the County of Southampton, in 1872, also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Both his son, the second Earl, and grandson, the third Earl, were prominent Liberal Unionist politicians. The latter was in 1941 called to the House of Lords through a writ of acceleration in his father's barony of Selborne. The third Earl's grandson, the fourth Earl, served as one of the ninety elected hereditary peers that remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, and sat as a Conservative. As of 2021, the titles are held by the latter's son, the fifth earl, who succeeded his father in that year.
Viscount Bridport is a title that has been created twice, once in the Peerage of Great Britain and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The first creation became extinct in 1814, while the second creation is extant.
Admiral Alexander Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport, KB, of Cricket St Thomas, Somerset, was an officer of the British Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars.
William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson, 2nd Duke of Bronte, was an Anglican clergyman and an older brother of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson.
Samuel Hood, 2nd Baron Bridport, of Redlynch House in Wiltshire, of Cricket House at Cricket St Thomas in Somerset, and of 12 Wimpole Street in Westminster, was a British politician and peer.
The Dukedom of Bronte is a dukedom with the title Duke of Bronte, referring to the town of Bronte in the province of Catania, Sicily. It was granted on 10 October 1799 at Palermo to the British Royal Navy officer Horatio Nelson by King Ferdinand III of Sicily, in gratitude for Nelson having saved the kingdom of Sicily from conquest by Revolutionary French forces under Napoleon. This was largely achieved by Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile (1798), which extinguished French naval power in the Mediterranean, but also by his having evacuated the royal family from their palace in Naples to the safety of Palermo in Sicily. It carried the right to sit in parliament within the military branch. The dukedom does not descend according to fixed rules but is transferable by the holder to whomsoever he or she desires, strangers included. Accompanying it was a grant of a 15,000 hectare estate, centered on the ancient monastery of Maniace, five miles north of Bronte, which Nelson ordered to be restored and embellished as his residence – thenceforth called Castello di Maniace. He appointed as his resident administrator Johann Andreas Graeffer, an English-trained German landscape gardener who had recently created the English Garden at the Royal Palace of Caserta in Naples. Nelson never set foot on his estate, as he was killed in action six years later at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Sir John Henry Eugen Vanderstegen Millington-Drake, was a British diplomat.
Maniace is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Catania in the Italian region Sicily, located about 130 kilometres (81 mi) east of Palermo and about 45 kilometres (28 mi) northwest of Catania.
Alexander Fuller-Acland-Hood, 1st Baron St Audries PC, known as Sir Alexander Fuller-Acland-Hood, Bt, until 1911, was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury under Arthur Balfour from 1902 to 1905.
Charlotte Mary Hood, Baroness Bridport, 3rd Duchess of Bronte was an English aristocrat who inherited an Italian dukedom and estate between Bronte and Maniace in Sicily.
Rowland Arthur Herbert Nelson Hood, 3rd Viscount Bridport, 6th Duke of Bronte, of Castello di Maniace, near Bronte, Sicily, was a British naval commander and Conservative politician.
General Alexander Nelson Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport, 4th Duke of Bronte, was a British Army officer and courtier.
Arthur Wellington Alexander Nelson Hood, 2nd Viscount Bridport CB of Guernsey, Channel Islands, was a British Army officer.
The Honourable John George Charles Fox-Strangways was a British diplomat, Whig politician, and courtier.
Sir Alexander Nelson Hood, 5th Duke of Bronte,, OCI, of Castello di Maniace, Bronte, and La Falconara, Taormina, both in Sicily, and of 13 Pelham Crescent, South Kensington, London, was a British courtier and Sicilian nobleman. "Discreetly homosexual" and described by his Sicilian biographer as "intelligent and refined", he was well-respected and liked by the Brontese, and spent six months of each year resident at Maniace until his old age. He was, like many contemporaries in his pre-World War II aristocratic circle, a "great admirer of Mussolini and the Fascist regime".
Earl of Arran is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It is not to be confused with the title Earl of Arran in the Peerage of Scotland. The two titles refer to different places: the Aran Islands in Ireland, and the Isle of Arran in Scotland. The Irish earldom is held by the Gore family. The Scottish earldom is a separate title, held as a subsidiary title of the Duke of Hamilton.
The Castello di Maniace is a manor house built on the site of a former ancient monastery 3 km south of the centre of the small village of Maniace and 8 km north of the large town of Bronte, on the eastern foothills of Mount Etna. From 1799 to 1981 it was the seat of the Dukes of Bronte, English noblemen, the first of whom was Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson (1758–1805), in 1799 created Duke of Bronte by King Ferdinand III of Sicily and Naples. In 1981 the manor house and large estate was sold to the Commune of Bronte by Alexander Hood, 4th Viscount Bridport, 7th Duke of Bronte, descended from the daughter of William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson (1757–1835) 2nd Duke of Bronte, elder brother and heir of Admiral Nelson.
The Hood baronetcy, of Tidlake in the County of Surrey, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 13 April 1809 for Admiral Samuel Hood (1762–1814). He was a younger son of Samuel Hood (1715–1805) of Kingsland in the parish of Netherbury, Dorset, a purser in the Royal Navy and first cousin of the 1st Viscount Hood and the 1st Viscount Bridport. The baronetcy was created with remainder to his nephew Alexander Hood (1793–1851) of Wootton House, Butleigh, Somerset, and the heirs male of his body.
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