Horace de Vere Cole

There is no better company than a real English eccentric and they do not come more eccentric than Horace de Vere Cole.

From Irish aristocratic lineage, he went to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge and fought in the Boer War. He was the greatest prankster of the Edwardian age.

Memorably, he pretended to be the uncle of the London-visiting Sultan of Zanzibar and was given a guided tour of Cambridge by the mayor.

His next prank exceeded even that: he led a delegation of ‘Abyssinians’ on board HMS Dreadnought.

His fellow blacked-up pranksters included Virginia Woolf and the painter Duncan Grant.

Personally I admire such people who prick pomposity, bring laughter to all and are the stuff of story-telling.

I came across de Vere Cole in the Rest is History podcast on the Piltdown Man which eventually turned out to be a hoax (he was not even a man) and Cole was rumoured to be behind it.

In fact it was probably a solicitor called Charles Dawson, a keen amateur archaeologist, who was instructed to extend the lease of the Sussex Archaeological Society in a fine building in Lewes but conveyed their house to himself.

See here for more about Horace de Vere Cole on the website of – WIKIPEDIA