George Kemp-Welch

George Durant Kemp-Welch (4 August 1907 – 18 June 1944) was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Warwickshire, Cambridge University, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and other amateur teams between 1927 and 1936. He was born in Chelsea, London, and died in the V1 bombing of the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, in Westminster.

Kemp-Welch was the younger son of Brian Kemp-Welch, an executive and then managing director of the Schweppes company where his own father had been chairman and managing director. He had an older twin brother, Peter Wellesbourne, and a sister who was just a year older, Elizabeth, who won later fame under her married name of Betty Kenward, the writer of the "Jennifer's Diary" social column in Tatler. Kemp-Welch's mother, Verena Georgina (Venour), was, according to the obituary of Betty Kenward, unorthodox in her living arrangements, having a succession of affairs. The Kemp-Welches were initially based in London and then in Brighton, where they are recorded in the 1911 census; Brian Kemp-Welch then bought a country house at Kineton in Warwickshire while retaining an address in Westminster or Belgravia.

The Kemp-Welch twins were educated at Charterhouse School, and George went on to Cambridge University, where he won Blues for both cricket and association football, being captain in both sports. He came down from Cambridge in 1931. A brief announcement in The Times on 24 February 1934 indicated that a wedding would take place between Kemp-Welch and a Mrs Diana Lucy Munro (Baldwin); a further announcement on 26 February indicated that the deed had been done quietly on 24 February at Kensington Registry Office. The cause for discretion was that the bride was not only the daughter of one of the leaders of the National Government, Stanley Baldwin, but also that the bride, some twelve years Kemp-Welch's senior, had divorced her previous husband Richard Gordon Munro.