Edward Lisle Strutt

Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt, CBE, DSO (8 February 1874 – 7 July 1948) was a British soldier and mountaineer, and President of the Alpine Club from 1935 to 1938. After a distinguished military career he defended classical mountaineering against what he saw as unhelpful trends in the sport for speed. Family Strutt was the son of Hon. Arthur Strutt and Alice Mary Elizabeth Philips de Lisle. His paternal grandfather was the 1st Baron Belper. On 10 October 1905 he married Florence Nina, daughter of John Robert Hollond MP DL, of Wonham, Bampton, Devon. They had no children. Education and military life Strutt was educated at Beaumont College, Windsor, then at Christ Church, Oxford, and the University of Innsbruck. He joined the part-time 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment) as a lieutenant (30 August 1899), and was promoted to captain on 20 February 1900. The battalion was embodied in late December 1899 for service during the Second Boer War, and in early March 1900 left Queenstown on the SS Oriental for South Africa. In July 1901 he commanded a detachment of the battalion involved in the first organised "drive" towards the Modder River that attempted to trap the Boers. The detachment spent three nights camped at over , and afterwards took part in the night attack that captured Commandant Marais at his laager. Strutt was mentioned in dispatches. Strutt left Cape Town for the United Kingdom with most of the battalion in May 1902, shortly before the end of the war. He later served in the First World War, gaining many decorations and attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Scots. Strutt commanded a detachment of soldiers from the Honourable Artillery Company that escorted the family of Charles I, the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King, to safety in Switzerland in 1919, after having served as the family's protector at Eckartsau on the personal initiative of King George V. Strutt was also involved in a Hungarian Habsburg restoration bid in February 1921 and as a communication link between the Habsburg Imperial and Royal couple aboard , on their way to exile in Madeira, and their children in Switzerland in November 1921.