Charles à Court Repington

Charles à Court was born at Heytesbury, in the county of Wiltshire on 29 January 1858, the son of Charles Henry Wyndham A'Court Repington, M.P.. His family name at birth was à Court. In his memoir, he later wrote: "The à Courts are Wiltshire folk, and in old days represented Heytesbury in Parliament... The name of Repington, under the terms of an old will, was assumed by all the à Courts in turn as they succeeded to the Amington Hall Estate, and I followed the rule when my father died in 1903."[3][4] He received his early formal education at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

He commenced his military career as a commissioned infantry officer in 1878 with the British Army's Rifle Brigade.[5] After serving in Afghanistan, Burma, and Sudan, he entered the Staff College at Camberley, where he was a brilliant student,[4] and where his peers included the future senior generals Herbert Plumer and Horace Smith-Dorrien. On graduation from Staff College he served as a military attaché in Brussels and The Hague, following which he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. He served as a staff officer during the Second Boer War in South Africa 1899–1901, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) during the conflict.[6]

After returning from the war, what had appeared to be a promising military career was cut short during a posting to Egypt in 1902 where Repington re-engaged a romantic affair dating back to the late 1890s with Lady Garstin, the wife of a British official, William Garstin, which became public. He was reprimanded by senior military authorities, as he had given a written promise "upon his honour as a soldier and gentleman" previously to have no further dealings with her. He had given this "parole" to Henry Wilson (a friend of Mary Garstin's late father, who had been asked by her family to get involved) on 9 October 1899. Repington told Wilson – at Chieveley, near Colenso in South Africa, during the 2nd Boer War campaign in February 1900 – that he regarded himself as absolved from his promise to give Mary Garstin up after learning that her husband had been spreading rumours of his other infidelities. During the divorce proceedings, it was revealed that Repington had ignored warnings about his behaviour (i.e. had "broken his parole") and had continued with the affair. Wilson was unable or unwilling to confirm Repington's claim that he had released him from his parole in South Africa. Repington believed that Wilson had betrayed a fellow soldier in this, but was forced to resign his commission and retire from the British Army in social disgrace with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on 15 January 1902.[7][8] In a subsequent career as a journalist, specializing in military matters, he was a strong critic of Wilson whenever the opportunity presented itself.[4][9]

On returning to London, he took a position as a military correspondent with the Morning Post (1902–1904), and The Times (1904–1918). His reports as a war correspondent from the scene of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905 were later published as a book entitled The War in the Far East. Repington was an advocate of the creation of a larger British Army (at the expense of the then all-powerful, in Edwardian England, Royal Navy), which brought him into conflict with Admiral Fisher).[10] He supported the creation of a British Army General Staff pre-World War I, feared a German "bolt from the blue" (i.e. an attack upon the British Isles by the German Empire before a declaration of hostilities), and was a "Westerner" (i.e., supported during the war the defeat of the German Empire by heavy fighting on the Western Front rather than pursuing an alternative indirect strategy). According to his memoir Vestigia, an unnamed Radical paper once called him "the gorgeous Wreckington", but this was a personal attack in reference to his divorce scandal.

During World War I Repington relied on his personal contacts in the British Army and the War Office for his information, and his early reporting of the war acquired important material from his personal friendship with the first Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, via which he was able to visit the Western Front during the opening moves of the conflict in late 1914, at a time when most of his rival journalists were prohibited by the British Government from going to the war front.

Repington appears to be the first person to have used the term "First World War" on 10 September 1918 in a conversation noted in his diary, hoping that title would serve as a reminder and warning that the Second World War was a possibility in the future.

After the end of the war Repington joined the staff of The Daily Telegraph, and subsequently published several books. These works included The First World War (1920), and After the War (1922), which were bestsellers, but cost Repington friendships for his apparent willingness to report what others considered to have been private conversations.

He died on 25 May 1925 in his 68th year at Pembroke Lodge in Hove, East Sussex. His body was buried at Hove Cemetery, Old Shoreham Road.

Repington married Melloney Scobell (1860–1934) in London on 11 February 1892. The marriage produced three children: Charles (died in infancy in August 1889), Melloney (1891–1965), and Violet (died 1898 in her 3rd year). He subsequently married Mary North (formerly Lady Garstin), the marriage producing one daughter, Laetitia (1911–2004).[16]

• Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG), 29 November 1900. For services during the operations in South Africa (Second Boer War)[6]
• Order of Leopold (Belgium), Commander
• Légion d'honneur (France), Officer

• 1905 – The War in the Far East, London, J. Murray.
• 1919 – Vestigia, Reminiscences of Peace and War, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
• 1920 – The First World War, 1914–1918, Vol. I & Vol. II, London : Constable & Co.
• 1922 – After the War; London–Paris–Rome–Athens–Prague–Vienna–Budapest–Bucharest–Berlin–Sofia–Coblenz–New York–Washington; a Diary, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

• Grigg, John (2002). Lloyd George: War leader, 1916–1918. London: Penguin. pp. 489–512.
• A. J. A. Morris: Reporting the First World War: Charles Repington, The Times and the Great War, 1914–1918, Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-107-10549-2

• Victor Bonham-Carter (1963). Soldier True: The Life and Times of Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson. London: Frederick Muller Limited.
• Holmes, Richard (2004). The Little Field Marshal: A Life of Sir John French. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-84614-0.
• Jeffery, Keith (2006). Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820358-2.
• Reid, Walter (2006). Architect of Victory: Douglas Haig. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. ISBN 1-84158-517-3.