George Fitz-Hardinge Berkeley (29 January 1870 – 14 November 1955) was an Anglo-Irish soldier, Irish nationalist, public servant, cricketer, and author.
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Personal life
George Fitz-Hardinge Berkeley was born in 1870, the only child of George Sackville Berkeley, a major in the Royal Engineers. He was educated at Wellington College and Keble College, Oxford. He later practised at the Irish Bar. In 1899 he married Caroline Isabel Mason. He moved to Italy in 1920 for the good of his wife's health; she died in 1933. The following year he married Janet Margaret Mary Weld, with whom he co-wrote a history of Italian unification. He was a member of two gentlemen's clubs: Vincent's in Oxford and the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. He died at his home, Hanwell Castle, near Banbury, Oxfordshire.
Public life
Berkeley served in the Worcestershire Regiment from 1898 to 1901. He supported Irish Home Rule and the Irish Volunteers, and at a 1914 meeting in Alice Stopford Green's London home he subscribed the largest amount to the arms purchase fund which resulted in the Howth gun-running. In the First World War he was a brigade musketry officer with the 3rd Cavalry reserve. After the war he was a member of the Claims Commission in France and Italy. In 1920 he was active in the Irish Dominion League, which proposed Dominion status for Ireland, and with the Peace with Ireland Council, of British public figures opposed to the government's waging of the Anglo-Irish War. In 1954 he submitted two papers to the Irish Bureau of Military History relating to his 1914 and 1920 activities. He was a magistrate in Oxfordshire from 1906 to 1937.