Sir John Edward Nourse Heygate, 4th Baronet (19 April 1903 – 18 March 1976), was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist.
He is chiefly remembered for his liaison with Evelyn Gardner, which began in 1929, when she was married to Evelyn Waugh. He is portrayed as "John Beaver" in Waugh's A Handful of Dust, as "Maltravers" in Anthony Powell's Agents and Patients and as "Sir Piers Tofield" in Henry Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.
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Background
Heygate was the son of Arthur Heygate, an Eton College housemaster and the third son of the second Heygate baronet, and Frances née Harvey. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1926 he went to Heidelberg as a trainee for the Foreign Office. He subsequently got a job as an assistant news editor at the BBC.
In the late 1920s Heygate was on the fringes of the group of socialites known as the "Bright Young People" and was friends with the author Anthony Powell. In 1929 divorce proceedings began between Evelyn Waugh and the Honourable Evelyn Gardner (a daughter of the 1st Baron Burghclere). Heygate was cited and hence was forced to resign from the BBC. (This scandal is said to be one reason why the BBC's first director general, Lord Reith, took a firm line against any of his staff being involved in a divorce.) In 1930 he married Gardner.