Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet

Sir Richard Lodowick Edward Montagu Rees, 2nd Baronet (4 April 1900 – 24 July 1970) was a British diplomat, writer, humanitarian, and painter.

Rees was the son of Sir John Rees, 1st Baronet and his wife Mary Catherine Dormer. His sister was the pilot Rosemary Rees, Lady du Cros, MBE. He was educated at West Downs School, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. His father, who had been an administrator in British India and a Liberal politician, died in 1922 and he inherited the baronetcy.

He was for a while an attache at the British Embassy in Berlin. In 1925 he became a lecturer at the Worker's Educational Association in London, and also acted as Treasurer there. John Middleton Murry appointed him editor of Adelphi in 1930, where he provided encouragement to George Orwell among others. He was the inspiration for the wealthy Ravelston, publisher of the socialist magazine Antichrist, in Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

In the Spanish Civil War he drove ambulances in Catalonia. He initially worked with the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief (NJC) and then the Quakers. Rees worked closely with the NJC, travelling to Mexico in June 1939 as the NJC's delegate to meet the SS Sinaia an oceanliner co-chartered by the NJC to send sixteen hundred Spanish refugees from the camps in France to resettle in Mexico.

During World War II, Rees served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). His service included an attachment to the French Navy from 1943, serving as a Liaison Officer (LO) on board ships of the newly-integrated Mediterranean Fleet, with whom he was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

As well as writing several books, he translated the works of Simone Weil and was the literary executor of George Orwell and R. H. Tawney. In addition to writing, he was a painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy.

Publications

• Brave Men: A study of D H Lawrence and Simone Weil (Victor Gollancz, London, 1958)
• For Love or Money (Secker & Warburg, London, 1960)
• George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (Secker & Warburg, London, 1961)
• A Theory of my Time (Secker & Warburg, London, 1963)
• Simone Weil: A Sketch for a Portrait (Oxford University Press, London, 1966)

Edited with John Middleton Murry

• Selected criticism 1916 to 1957 (Oxford University Press, London, 1960)
• Poets, Critics, Mystics (Feffer & Simons, London & Amsterdam, 1970)

Translations with Jane Degras

• Alfred Grosser Western Germany: From defeat to rearmament (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1955)
• Jules Monnerot Sociology of Communism (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1953)
• Simone Weil Selected Essays (Oxford University Press, London, 1962)
• Simone Weil Seventy Letters (Oxford University Press, London, 1965)
• Simone Weil On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (Oxford University Press, London, 1968)
• Simone Weil First and Last Notebooks (Oxford University Press, London, 1970

Arms

Coat of arms of Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet

Crest A demi-lion rampant erased Azure charged on the shoulder with a plate thereon a cross Gules. Escutcheon Argent a chevron Sable between three ravens Proper on a chief of the second between two plates each charged with a cross Gules a like plate charged with a demi-lion rampant erased Azure. Motto Deus Alit Eos (God Nourishes Them)