author
Earl of Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke Mayo
1851–1927
An Anglo-Irish peer and public figure, he moved through the worlds of politics, landownership, and the arts in a period of major change in Ireland. He served in the House of Lords and later in the early institutions of Southern Ireland and the Irish Free State.
1 Audiobook
Sport in Abyssinia; Or, The Mareb and Tackazzee
by Earl of Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke Mayo
About the author
Born on 2 July 1851, he was the son of Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, and inherited the earldom in 1872. He was educated at Eton and began adult life in the army, joining the 10th Hussars before later entering public life.
He became an Irish representative peer in the House of Lords in 1890 and remained active in politics for decades. Late in his career, he also sat in the Senate of Southern Ireland and then in Seanad Éireann, placing him in both the fading world of the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the institutions of the new Irish state.
He is also remembered as a patron of the arts. The Dictionary of Irish Biography describes him as a landowner, politician, and patron of the arts, which gives a good sense of the range of his public life. He died on 31 December 1927.