Captain Quentin Hurst, the Rifle Brigade, previously reported as missing, is now known to have been killed in action on April 7, 1941.
The only son of Judge and Lady Hurst, he was born in Manchester (which his father represented in Parliament for 16 years) in 1912 and educated at Marlborough. He follows in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, by winning a scholarship at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 1932 he gained the Stanhope Historical Essay Prizes; in 1933 a first in history; in 1934 a second in the B.C.L..
He was president of the Lincoln J.C.R., and debating society.; of the Morley and Davenant societies; he edited the Lincoln Imp, and he played in the O.U.D.S. He was awarded a Cholmeley studentship at Lincoln’s Inn and won the Buchanan prize in the Bar finals, 1934. He soon acquired a good Chancery practice.
Having joined the Tower Hamlets Rifle, along with his brother-in-law, Kenneth Elphinstone, and other Lincoln’s Inn friends, after Munich, he became a captain when war broke out, and a knowledge of Italian and Arabic proved useful in the Near East campaign.
In February, 1938, he married Rosemary, daughter of r and Mrs G.H. Mansfield, of Fitzwalters, near Brentwood. She survives him with one son born in 1940.
Captain Hurst was a gifted scholar and speaker, had travelled widely and spoke French perfectly. His biography “Henry of Navarre” (1937) has been described as the best life of that ambiguous hero, and it established the author’s reputation as a historian.
Quentin Berkeley Hurst was onyl 29 years old when he was killed. He was the son of His Honour Sir Gerald Berkeley Hurst, Kt., K.C., and of Lady Berkeley Hurst (nee Hopkinson), of Chislehurst,
He is commemorated at Benghazi Wat cemetery in Libya.
Sources:
Bromley & District Times, 10th October 1941
CWGC entry
