Derek Cooper

Cooper was born in Bromley in Kent. He was the third of four children of Captain George Stanley Cooper and his wife, Clara Tilling. The family were comfortably wealthy – the Coopers family were printers, and the Tillings owned a substantial omnibus company. His father was killed in Jhansi in India in 1915, while serving with the Royal West Kent Regiment.

He was educated at Kent House School in Eastbourne and then Eastbourne College. His mother married one of his father's fellow officers from India, Major George Dominic Heyland. The family moved to his estate in County Londonderry.

Cooper failed an eyesight test and so was unable to join the Royal Navy as he wished. Instead, he became an apprentice civil engineer in 1930, working in Greenwich for the Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company. He was sent to Palestine in 1932, where a new harbour was being built at Haifa. He became a Special Constable in the Palestine Police, but returned to Ireland when the project was finished in 1934. His stepfather had died, and he ran the estate at Ballintemple.

He married Pamela Armstrong-Lushington-Tulloch in 1937. They had one daughter, Jennifer-June (born 1939), and one son, Michael (born 1944). His daughter married Jeremy Browne (later 11th Marquess of Sligo).

Cooper joined the Irish Guards as a reservist in October 1936. He was mobilised on 2 September 1939, and worked on the project to build field defences against the expected Nazi invasion in 1940. Having volunteered to join the Second Household Cavalry Regiment, he landed in Normandy on 13 July 1944, serving in France, Belgium, and at the battle for Nijmegen bridge on the road to Arnhem. He remained in Europe until 1946, when he was posted to Egypt with the Life Guards.

He was transferred to Palestine in 1947. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1948 for his service defending the Arab population in Jaffa from the advancing Yishuv forces, in the weeks after the Deir Yassin massacre.^[1] Most of the Arabs in Jaffa left with the British forces when they withdrew on 10 May 1948. He returned with his regiment to Germany, where he served as second-in-command.

He met Pamela, Viscountess Ruthven of Canberra, widow of Major The Hon. Patrick Hore-Ruthven, in 1949. She retained the noted beauty of her youth, and he sported a cavalry officer's moustache. The couple fell in love, and he petitioned his first wife for divorce. Princess Alice disapproved of the proposed marriage, and the Earl of Athlone, Princess Alice's husband, was colonel of Cooper's regiment. Major Cooper was divorced in 1951, and resigned his commission. His prospective new wife left Windsor, and they married on 30 July 1952. He gained two stepsons, Grey (later 2nd Earl of Gowrie) and Malise.