John Bernard Arbuthnot

Major John Bernard Arbuthnot, MVO (17 May 1875 in London – 16 September 1950) was a British soldier, banker, and journalist.

Arbuthnot was the son of Colonel George Arbuthnot and wife Caroline Emma Nepean Aitchison.

He served in the Scots Guards, reaching the rank of major. In 1900 and 1901 he fought in the Second Boer War. Following his return to the United Kingdom, he was in July 1902 appointed Aide-de-Camp to Sir Henry Arthur Blake, Governor of Hong Kong. He later served in the First World War, where he was mentioned in despatches. He was invested as a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1902. He was also a merchant banker.

As a journalist on the Daily Express, in 1917 he founded and was author to its By the Way column, writing it pseudonymously as 'Beachcomber', before he was promoted to deputy editor and passed the role to D. B. Wyndham-Lewis in 1919.

In Hong Kong on 8 June 1903 he married Olive Blake (5 November 1875 - 12 September 1953), daughter of the Governor, Sir Henry Arthur Blake, and wife Edith Bernal Osborne. They had six children:

• Irene Joan Grace Arbuthnot (25 April 1904 - Youghal, County Cork, 17 March 1997), explorer and author known as Joan Arbuthnot, wrote the book More Profit Than Gold, published in 1935
• David George Arbuthnot (7 April 1905 - 14 November 1985), married firstly on 17 May 1933 Elisabeth Kemeys-Tynte, 10th Baroness Wharton, and had female issue, and married secondly on 25 April 1946 Barbara Margherita Chiappini (? - 1975), daughter of Francis Chiappini and widow second wife on 20 April 1929 of Percy Seymour Douglas-Hamilton (2 October 1875 - 6 February 1940), without issue
• Group Captain Terence John Arbuthnot (8 October 1906 - Kensington, London, 31 December 1995), married on 20 April 1937 Karin Gunborg Sundgren, daughter of Carl Adolph Sundgren
• Commander Bernard Kieran Charles Arbuthnot (8 November 1909 - 14 September 1975), married on 15 April 1939 Rosemary Harold Thompson, daughter of Lt.-Col. Harold Thompson
• Major Richard Henry Myles Arbuthnot (17 August 1911 - killed on active service, Italy, 16 October 1943), married on 28 April 1939 Marjorie Helen Miller, daughter of Ralph Miller
• Patricia Evangeline Anne Arbuthnot (17 March 1914 - 6 October 1989), married firstly on 10 October 1933 Arthur Cecil Byron, son of Cecil Byron, by whom she had a son Darrell Byron, who died in Ireland aged two, divorcing in 1940, and married secondly in 1940 Francis Claud Cockburn of Brook Lodge, Youghal, County Cork (Peking, 12 April 1904 - 15 December 1981), and had issue

• Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 120.
• Arbuthnot: Mrs. P. S-M. Arbuthnot, Memories of the Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire (London, 1920), p. 311.