Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet (24 September 1885 – 14 August 1971), commonly known by his nickname Shane Leslie, was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, writer, literary critic, and public speaker. He was a first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill.
Early Life and Education
Leslie was born at Castle Leslie, Glaslough, County Monaghan, Ireland, into a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowning family. His father was Sir John Leslie, 2nd Baronet, and his mother, Leonie Blanche Jerome, was a sister of Jennie Churchill (Winston Churchill's mother); both were daughters of the American financier Leonard W. Jerome.
Leslie was educated at Ludgrove School, Eton College, and King's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1908 and became a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He adopted the anglicised Irish variant of his name, "Shane."
Political and Diplomatic Career
In the January 1910 general election, Leslie stood as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate for the Londonderry City division, losing by 57 votes. In the second general election later that year, he was again narrowly defeated by the Unionist candidate.
During World War I, Leslie served in a British Ambulance Corps before being invalided out. He was subsequently sent to Washington, D.C., to assist the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, in softening Irish-American hostility toward England and obtaining American intervention in the war following the 1916 Easter Rising.
As a first cousin of Winston Churchill, Leslie remained a witness to discussions during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
Writing Career
Leslie wrote extensively across multiple genres, including verse, prose, biography, and polemic. Notable works include:
- The End of a Chapter (1916) – an autobiographical work written while hospitalised during the war
- The Oppidan (1922) – a roman à clef about his life at Eton
- The Cantab (1926) – a novel based on life at Cambridge, which Leslie withdrew from circulation after objections from a Roman Catholic bishop
- Mrs Fitzherbert: A Life Chiefly from Unpublished Sources (1939)
- Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923)
- Shane Leslie's Ghost Book (1955)
He also served as editor of the Dublin Review (1916). Leslie wrote two highly critical reviews of James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, one published in the Dublin Review under the pseudonym "Domini Canis" ("Dog of the Lord"), in which he called for censorship of the work.
Personal Life and Later Years
In 1912, Leslie married Marjorie Ide, youngest daughter of Henry Clay Ide, former U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Governor-General of the Philippines. They had three children: Anita Leslie (novelist and biographer), Sir John Norman Ide Leslie (4th Baronet), and Desmond Arthur Peter Leslie.
After his first wife's death in 1951, Leslie married Iris Carola Frazer in 1958.
Leslie was a passionate advocate of reforestation. He transferred St Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, for which Pope Pius XI awarded him a papal knighthood as a Knight Commander of St Gregory. He was also appointed a Privy Chamberlain to Pope Pius XI.
Leslie succeeded his father as 3rd Baronet in 1944.
He died on 14 August 1971 at Hove, East Sussex, England, aged 85. A requiem mass was held at Westminster Cathedral.
