Aubrey Herbert Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert ( 1880 – 26 September 1923 ) was a British diplomat , traveller and intelligence officer associated with Albanian independence . Twice he was offered the throne of Albania . From 1911 until his death he was a Conservative Member of Parliament . Background . Aubrey Herbert was the second son of Henry Herbert , 4th Earl of Carnarvon , a wealthy landowner , British cabinet minister and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and his second wife , Elizabeth Howard of Greystoke Castle , Cumberland , sister of Esme Howard , 1st Baron Howard of Penrith . He was a half - brother to George Herbert , 5th Earl of Carnarvon , the famous Egyptologist who co - discovered King Tutankhamen ' s tomb along with Howard Carter . He was afflicted with eye problems which left him nearly blind from early childhood , losing all his sight towards the end of his life . Herbert was educated at Eton College and Balliol College , Oxford University , where he obtained a first class degree in modern history . He was famous for climbing the roofs of the university buildings , despite his near blindness . He numbered among his friends Adrian Carton De Wiart , Raymond Asquith , John Buchan and Hilaire Belloc . Reginald Farrer remained close throughout his life . His friendship with Middle Eastern traveller and advisor Sir Mark Sykes dates from his entry into parliament in 1911 when , with George Lloyd , they were the three youngest Conservative MPs . They shared an interest in foreign policy and worked closely together in the Arab Bureau ( 1916 ) . Herbert was also a close friend of T . E . Lawrence ( Lawrence of Arabia ) ; their letters do not feature in the standard Lawrence collections , but are quoted by Margaret Fitzherbert in the biography of her grandfather , " The Man Who Was Greenmantle " . Languages and travels . Herbert was in his own right a considerable Orientalist , and a linguist who spoke French , Italian , German , Turkish , Arabic , Greek and Albanian as well as English . A renowned traveller , especially in the Middle East , his trips include voyages through Japan , Yemen , Anatolia and Albania . During the period 1902 - 04 he was an honorary attache in Tokyo , then in Constantinople during 1904 - 05 . He was much more interested in the Middle East than in the Far East . Herbert often dressed as a tramp on his travels . Albania . He became a passionate advocate of Albanian independence , having visited the country in 1907 , 1911 and 1913 . During a stay in Tirana ( 1913 ) he befriended Essad Pasha . When the Albanian delegates to the 1912 – 13 London Balkan Peace Conference arrived , they secured the assistance of Herbert as an advisor . He was very active in their cause and is regarded as having a considerable influence on Albania ' s obtaining independence in the resulting Treaty of London ( 1913 ) . One of his constant correspondents on Albania was Edith Durham . He was twice offered the throne of Albania . On the first occasion , just before World War I , he was interested , but was dissuaded by the then prime minister , Herbert Asquith , a family friend . The offer remained unofficial and was rejected by the Foreign Office . The Albanian crown went to William of Wied . The second occasion the crown was offered was after the defeat of the Italian Army by the Albanians in September 1920 . Again the offer was unofficial , though it was made on behalf of the Albanian government . Herbert discussed the offer with Philip Kerr and Maurice Hankey , pursuing the idea of perhaps acting under the banner of the League of Nations ; Eric Drummond , a friend of Herbert , had become its first Secretary General , and lobbying by Herbert led to the acceptance of Albania as a member in the League of Nations in December 1920 . With a change of Foreign Minister in the Albanian government Herbert ' s chance of a crown greatly diminished . The crown was then ( April 1921 ) , still more unofficially , offered to the Duke of Atholl by Jim Barnes of the British Friends of Albania residing in Italy . The National Library of Albania in Tirana was once named after Herbert , as was a village in the country . Parliament . He was a very independent Conservative Member of Parliament ( MP ) for the Southern division of Somerset from 1911 to 1918 , and for Yeovil from 1918 to his death . Always an advocate of the rights of smaller nations , Herbert opposed the British Government ' s Irish policy . Herbert was , however , always seen as something of a lightweight in the House of Commons . World War One . 1914 - 15 . Despite very poor eyesight , Herbert was able , at the outbreak of World War I in 1914 , to join the Irish Guards , in which he served in a supernumerary position . He did this by purchasing a uniform and boarding a troopship bound for France . During the Battle of Mons he was wounded , taken prisoner , and escaped . After a convalescence in England and unable to rejoin due to his ocular disability , Aubrey was proposed for service in military intelligence in Egypt by Kitchener ' s military secretary Oswald FitzGerald via Mark Sykes ( see Baghdad Railway ) . Herbert was attached to the Intelligence Bureau in Caïro under Colonel Clayton in January 1915 . In mid - February he was sent on an intelligence gathering mission in the Eastern Mediterranean aboard the cruiser " Bacchante " . When the Gallipoli Campaign started , General Alexander Godley , formerly of the Irish Guards and second in command to General Birdwood of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps , now commanding the New Zealanders , offered him an appointment as liaison officer and interpreter on the General ' s staff . His pre - war contacts ( a . o . Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı ) and ability to speak Turkish were to prove useful . He became famous for arranging a truce of eight hours , on Whit Monday , 24 May , with the Turkish commander Mustafa Kemal , for the purpose of burying the dead . ( This episode appears , with him as " the Honourable Herbert " , in Louis de Bernières ' s novel " Birds Without Wings " . ) In Eastern Mediterranean Intelligence he worked together with Compton Mackenzie . In October 1915 , on sick leave in England , Herbert carried with him a memorandum from the Arab Bureau from Colonel Clayton to the Foreign Office explaining the situation in the Middle East . In November , the memorandum , at first favourably received , became obsolete after the visit of François Georges - Picot and his subsequent negotiations with Mark Sykes . It would appear that the Arab Bureau , however , continued working along the lines of the memorandum which led to contrary promises resulting in accusations of bad faith . In November 1915 Herbert was in Paris and Rome on a secret mission related to Albania . Following the plan to evacuate Anzac Cove beginning the following month , he volunteered to return to Anzac to stay with the rear guard , convinced that his knowledge of language and his network of acquaintances would greatly benefit that body if captured . The successful evacuation of Anzac and Suvla Bay on 20 December and the good prospects for Cape Helles countered his proposal . 1916 . Impatient with the indecision of the Foreign Office over Albania , at the start of 1916 Herbert went prospecting for new opportunities . Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss proposed a job for him as Captain in Intelligence . When in February the War Office cleared him from involvement in Albania , he took up the offer and found himself in charge of Naval intelligence in Mesopotamia ( now Iraq ) and the Gulf . Following the critical situation of British troops at Kut - al - Amara , the War Office was instructed to offer Herbert ' s services to General Townshend to negotiate terms with the Turks . T . E . Lawrence was sent on behalf of the Arab Bureau while Colonel Beach acted for Intelligence of the Indian Expeditionary Force . Together they were to oversee the exchange of prisoners and wounded , and eventually to offer the commander Khalil Pasha up to ₤2 million for the relief of Kut . The offer was rejected by Enver Pasha , and the evacuation of the wounded severely hampered through lack of transport . The situation at Kut led Aubrey to send a telegram to Austen Chamberlain , Secretary of State for India , with the support of General Lake but still in breach of army regulations , condemning incompetence in the handling of the Mesopotamian campaign . The Government of India ordered a court martial but the War Office refused . Admiral Wemyss , who travelled to Simla for the purpose , supported him throughout . Back in England in July 1916 , Aubrey Herbert started asking in the House of Commons for a Royal Commission to inquire into the conduct of the Mesopotamian campaign . He opposed the routine evasiveness of the Prime Minister , Asquith ( a close friend ) , by speaking in the House four times on Mesopotamia , and his critics saw in his obstinacy a personal vendetta against Sir Beauchamp Duff , the Commander - in - Chief in India , and Sir William Meyer , the Financial Secretary . , but his persistence paid off , and a Special Commission Mesopotamia was subsequently appointed . In October 1916 Aubrey Herbert started his post as a liaison officer with the Italian army , whose frontline lay in Albania . It seems that he was unaware of the clause partitioning Albania signed with Italy in the secret Treaty of London on 26 April 1915 . When the Bolsheviks published its secret provisions in 1917 , he rejected the idea of Albania as merely a small Muslim state , the fiefdom he believed of Essad Pasha . In December he was back in England . In December 1916 also he learned of the death of his cousin Bron , the son of his ( pacifist ) uncle Auberon Herbert , to whom he had felt closest . From that date Aubrey was to consistently support the idea of negotiated peace . 1917 - 1918 . 1917 saw him working , under General MacDonogh , the Director of Military Intelligence , on plans for a separate peace with Turkey . On 16 July he conducted a series of meetings with the Turks in Geneva , Interlaken and Bern , among them a ( secret ) representative of an influential anti - Enver group . It should be noted that Mustafa Kemal , whom Aubrey knew from Gallipoli , had fallen out with Enver Pasha over the way that - by personal order of the Sultan - his command over the Seventh Army opposite Allenby in Syria had been bestowed on him on 5 July ( he had been a Staff Captain with the Fifth Army in Damascus in 1905 ) . Aubrey took his notes to the Inter - Allied Conference in Paris . In a memorandum for the Foreign Office he said " If we get the luggage it does not matter very much if the Turks get the labels . When Lord Kitchener was all - powerful in Egypt his secretary was wearing a fez . Mesopotamia and Palestine are worth a fez . " In November 1917 Aubrey Herbert was again sent to Italy under the orders of General Macdonogh . Now he was in charge of the British Adriatic Mission , with Samuel Hoare coordinating the Mission ' s special intelligence in Rome . An earlier proposal by " Vatra " , The Pan Albanian Federation of America , of raising an Albanian regiment under Aubrey ' s command had been renewed . The matter was a contentious one for the Italians , as " Vatra " became increasingly anti - Italian . On 17 July 1918 the proposal was formally approved in Boston , and the Italian Consulate accepted , provided it became a unit in the Italian Army . The end of the war prevented the issue from growing more complex . Herbert ended the war as head of the British mission to the Italian army in Albania with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel . Aftermath . Unclear policy led to nationalist criticism from Imperial bases such as Egypt ( see Saad Zaghlul , 1919 ) at the Paris Peace Conference , 1919 , nor was the resulting political handling cause for much optimism to privileged witnesses such as Aubrey , T . E . Lawrence or Gertrude Bell . At the Conference there was a glimpse of further prospect for Aubrey Herbert when the Italian delegates proposed to assume shared responsibility over the Caucasus , an area of vital strategic importance - the Baku oilfields , access from the north to Mosul and Kirkuk . By May 1919 , the proposal appeared to be quite empty . By May 1919 also , the Directorate of Intelligence had changed hands , on the authority of Lord Curzon ( acting Foreign Secretary while Arthur Balfour was negotiating in Paris ) from Aubrey ' s chief General MacDonogh to Sir Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard Special Branch i . e . from military to civilian in view of the Bolshevik threat on the home front . Thus it was possible for Aubrey in February 1921 to amaze a friend he could confide to , Lord Robert Cecil , that he was going abroad as an inspector of Scotland Yard : he went to Berlin to interview Talaat Pasha for intelligence . Family life and premature death . Aubrey Herbert married Mary , daughter of the 4th Viscount de Vesci , a member of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland . Lord de Vesci and his wife had converted to Roman Catholicism and raised their children accordingly . Herbert ' s mother - in - law gave the family a fine house in London . Herbert ' s mother gave him both a country estate at Pixton Park in Somerset with 5 , 000 acres ( 20 km² ) of land and a substantial villa on the Gulf of Genoa at Portofino . Aubrey and Mary Herbert had four children , a son named Auberon who died unmarried and three daughters , Gabriel Mary , Bridget , and Laura , the last of whom married the novelist Evelyn Waugh . Waugh featured the Herberts ' Italian villa in his war trilogy " Sword of Honour " , although he moved it to an imaginary location on the Bay of Naples . Herbert was thus the grandfather of the journalist Auberon Waugh ( who was named after Herbert ' s own son ) and the great - grandfather of Daisy and Alexander Waugh . Herbert was a slim man of more than average height and contemporaries described him as having perfect manners . Towards the end of his life , he became totally blind . He was given very bad advice to the effect that having all his teeth extracted would restore his sight . The dental operation resulted in blood poisoning from which he died in London on 26 September 1923 . Herbert ' s estate was probated in 1924 at 49 , 970 pounds sterling . His son Auberon inherited the Pixton Park and Portofino properties . Model for literature . It is widely believed that Herbert is the inspiration for the character Sandy Arbuthnot , a hero in several John Buchan novels . The series starts with " The Thirty - Nine Steps " , but Arbuthnot ' s first appearance is in " Greenmantle " , hence the title of his granddaughter ' s biography of him , " The Man Who Was Greenmantle " . Herbert ' s Italian family villa is the model for that in the " Sword of Honour " trilogy by his son - in - law Evelyn Waugh . The cameo character of the ' Honourable Herbert ' in Louis de Bernières ' s novel " Birds Without Wings " is clearly based on Herbert . He appears as a British liaison officer with the ANZAC troops serving in the Gallipoli campaign . A polyglot officer able to communicate with both sides , he arranges the burial of the dead of both sides , achieving great popularity with both sides - a description that mirrors his role in the 1915 truce .