Henry Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 7th Baron Thurlow

Major-General Henry Charles Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 7th Baron Thurlow, CB, CBE, DSO & Bar (29 May 1910 – 29 May 1971) was a British Peer and British Army officer.

Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, Cumming-Bruce was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Seaforth Highlanders in 1930. In 1936 he was attached as ADC to the British High Commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan, General Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope and later Sir Harold MacMichael. During the Second World War, Cumming-Bruce served in a number of capacities in Palestine, Eritrea, and Libya, and in 1944 as Lieutenant Colonel commanding 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders in North-West Europe and then Brigadier commanding 44 Lowland Brigade, during which he received the DSO. In 1945, Cumming-Bruce was appointed a Bar to the DSO, and installed as Commandant of the British Army of the Rhine's Training Centre, from where he saw out the rest of the War.

From 1947 to 1959 he undertook a number of postings as brevet Lieutenant Colonel (1950), Colonel (1952), Brigadier (1958) and then in 1959 Major-General. He succeeded his father as Baron Thurlow in 1952. He served as General Officer Commanding (GOC) 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and Northumbrian Area from 1959 to 1962, and then GOC of British Forces in Malta and Libya, 1962–63, before retiring in 1964.

Thurlow died on his 61st birthday, and was succeeded in his Barony by the elder of his two younger twin brothers, Francis, then serving as Colonial Governor of the Bahamas.

Further reading

• Lt-Col Martin Lindsay, So Few Got Through, London: Collins, 1946. An account of 1st Bn Gordon Highlanders in North West Europe by Sir Martin Lindsay, 1st Baronet, who was Cumming-Bruce's second-in-command.