NEWNHAM-DAVIS, LT. COL. NATHANIEL

NEWNHAM-DAVIS, LT. COL. N(ATHANIEL). Born in London, educated at Harrow; commissioned into the Buffs regiment in 1873 and fought in the Zulu Wars; later involved with the intelligence service in India; retired in 1894, joining the staff of the “Sporting Times,” become its assistant editor; also editor of the “Man of the World”, 1894-1900.

Newnham - Davis was certainly in the zulu war he may have been at Nyezane on the 22nd Jan , Glanville I dont know for sure and fairly certain Russell was far to old to have been
involved in the zulu war , happy to be corrected .
Cheers 90th.

I posted yesterday that Newnham - Davis was possibly at the Battle of Nyezane , it appears he wasnt , the following from ' The South African Campaign Of 1879 ' by Mackinnon & Shadbolt .
'' Lt Newnham - Davis served with the Mtd Infantry in the Hd- Qtrs Columns, performing much important duty in Reconnoitring ''.
Cheers 90th.

90th,

You are correct –Lieutenant Newman-Davis was with the Mounted Infantry. He was out of the camp at Isandlwana on the 22nd of January. Along with the rest of Chelmsford’s column, he spent the night on the battlefield.

The next morning Lt Nathaniel Newman-Davis of the Buffs came across Signalman William Aynsley’s body. Newnham-Davis took a number of personal items, including photographs, from the body, which he gave to Lieutenant Milne to be returned to Aynsley’s family. He also took Aynsley's cutlass, which he kept as a souvenir.


Petty Officer Tom

Petty Officer said:

. ..Newnham-Davis took ...photographs, from the body, which he gave to Lieutenant Milne to be returned to Aynsley’s family.

Hi all,

Someone knows where are today these photographs?
regards

Frédéric

A mentioned of ..Newnham-Davis link below.

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol032hk.html

"NEWNHAM-DAVIS, LT. COL. NATHANIEL). Born in London, educated at Harrow; commissioned into the Buffs regiment in 1873 and fought in the Zulu Wars; later involved with the intelligence service in India; retired in 1894, joining the staff of the “Sporting Times,” become its assistant editor; also editor of the “Man of the World”, 1894-1900."

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
"Newnham-Davis in 1914
Nathaniel Newnham-Davis (6 November 1854 – 28 May 1917), generally known as Lieutenant Colonel Newnham-Davis, was a food writer and gourmet. After a military career, he took up journalism, and was chiefly known for his restaurant reports from London establishments of the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. He was also active in the theatre as an occasional playwright and amateur performer.


Life and career

Early years, army and journalism
Newnham-Davis was born in London on 6 November 1854, the eldest son of Henry Newnham-Davis and his wife, Mary.He was educated at Harrow School, and joined The Buffs, a leading infantry regiment of the British army. He served in the South African colonial campaigns with the Imperial Mounted Infantry, and was decorated and twice mentioned in dispatches. He later served in the Straits Settlements, China and India. For three years he was attached to the Intelligence Department at Simla.
In 1894, Newnham-Davis retired from the army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and joined the staff of The Sporting Times, remaining with the publication until 1912.From 1894 to 1900 he was also editor of The Man of the World.He wrote fiction, Three Men and a God, and other stories (1896), Jadoo (1898) and "Baby" Wilkinson's V.C., and other stories (1899).
The Times described Newnham-Davis as a playwright in addition to his military and journalistic career.While still in the army he made a version of A Midsummer Night's Dream "adapted to pastoral representation", published in Calcutta.[5] He published a play, A Charitable Bequest – A comedietta (1900). He wrote the story for several ballets, and was co-author of a show, Lady Madcap, in collaboration with Paul Rubens and Percy Greenbank, produced in London in 1904. In the same year he joined W.S. Gilbert, F.C. Burnand, Bernard Shaw and others in a charity matinée performance of Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the Garrick Theatre.

Food writer
Newnham-Davis was best known for his writings about food and wine. His Dinners and Diners – Where and How to Dine in London was published in 1899, with a second edition in 1901.In 1903 he published The Gourmet's Guide to Europe, written in collaboration with Algernon Bastard. A second edition was published in 1908 and a third in 1911. The New York Times wrote of him: "He is not of a domestic turn. The people of the gay world he affects breakfast at a café, lunch at a club, dine in the palm room, or the ivory room, or the gold room of a 'swell' hotel."The Gourmet's Guide to Europe was published in an American edition in 1908, when The New York Times called it "a veritable masterwork of its own genre". In 1914 Newnham-Davis published The Gourmet's Guide to London.
Newnham-Davis is chiefly remembered as the gastronomic correspondent of The Pall Mall Gazette.[11] A lifelong bachelor, he regularly dined at London's great hotels and restaurants in company with a succession of companions given discreet pseudonyms in his restaurant reviews. Among them were "the Colleen", who "prattled incessantly of horses", "the Little Prima Donna", "the Dean's Daughter," and "Miss Brighteyes", a débutante who distressed her host by drinking lemonade with caviare.
In a 1952 article about Newnham-Davis, entitled "A Gourmet in Edwardian London", Elizabeth David detailed some of the menus presented to the Colonel and his companions in the last years of the Victorian era and the first decade of the 20th century. A fairly typical example was "oysters, soup, sole, a fillet of beef cooked with truffles and accompanied by pommes de terre souflées, wild duck à la presse, a pudding and an ice-cream (bombe Midland)". David notes that with a bottle of wine, this dinner cost 28 shillings for the two of them.Newnham-Davis was strictly fair in his reports, and seldom expressed a preference for one establishment over others. He rarely condemned a restaurant, instead conveying his disapproval by omission. He said that he did not "think it fair to a restaurant to condemn it upon one trial, or fair to himself to give it another." Despite Newnham-Davis's efforts to remain impartial, Elizabeth David concluded that his personal favourite was the Savoy Hotel. There, in the 1890s, Escoffier's mousse de jambon, "served on a great block of ice and melting like snow in the mouth", was declared a masterpiece, and his bortsch was held by Newnham-Davis to be the best soup in the world.

Last years
In 1915, during the First World War, Newnham-Davis applied for re-engagement by the army and was put in charge of prisoners of war held at Alexandra Palace.[2] He died on 28 May 1917 at his house near Regent's Park, London, aged 62.[2] He was buried at Silchester, Hampshire with full military honours.
[/i]

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/The-Gourmets-Guide-To-Europe-Newnham-davis-nathaniel-Lieut-col/9781248484883-item.html?ikwid=lieut.-col.+(nathaniel)+newnham-davis&ikwsec=Books

Click Here:

"Lt-Col Nathaniel Newnham Davis

In summer 2019 a sign appeared near the gate to St. Mary’s Church, Silchester, which reads “At this location there is a Commonwealth War Grave”. This refers to the grave of Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Newnham Davis, who was buried in the churchyard on 4th June 1917. His is classed as a “war grave” by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission because he died whilst in service during the period 4th August 1914 to 31st August 1921.

Born on 6th November 1854 at 5 Kent Terrace, Marylebone, to Henry and Mary Newnham Davis, Nathaniel was the first of nine children. He attended Harrow School and in 1873 became a Lieutenant in The Buffs (East Kent Regiment, 3rd Foot) subsequently being seconded to the Imperial Mounted Infantry in South Africa.

On 24th January 1879 he wrote a letter home from Rorke’s Drift, the day after 150 British soldiers had held off an attack by 4,000 Zulus. In that letter he says how he was lucky to have avoided the massacre of over 700 of his fellow soldiers on the 22nd at the Battle of Isandlwana, as he was out on patrol. He wrote of sleeping that night on the battlefield, lying amongst the dead.

Nathaniel received the South Africa medal and clasps 1887-1888-1889 and was mentioned in dispatches twice. He went on to serve in the Straits Settlement, in China and also in India, where, for three years, he served in the Intelligence Department in Simla.

He retired from the army in 1894 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and became a journalist with the Sporting Times, as well as editor of Man of the World. He was also a playwright and an author, publishing fiction and writing the story for several ballets, as well as co-authoring a show, Lady Madcap. He was best known for his writings about food and wine, particularly in The Pall Mall Gazette, and his publications included Dinners and Diners – Where and How to Dine in London and The Gourmet's Guide to London. By the time the latter was published in 1914 he was said to have launched a restaurant revolution, demystifying the protocol of restaurant dining and what he called “the spider web of a carte de jour”, for hundreds of middle-class people – enabling what he referred to as the “Respectable Classes” to venture out to a restaurant.

Nathaniel was a lifelong bachelor and whilst he appears to have never lived in Silchester, by time of his death, his family were firmly established here. His maternal grandfather, Henry Newnham, who had served as a civil servant in the East India Company for 39 years, is said to have retired to Silchester, although where he lived is currently unclear. His mother, Mary, died in 1909, and sometime in the next year or so, Nathaniel’s brother Alfred (a solicitor) bought a new house in Silchester called Newtimber, which was later renamed Romans. Alfred and two other brothers, Stanley and Stewart, lived there right through until the late 1940s. Another brother, Henry, and his wife Eleanor, moved into The Grange sometime between 1911 and 1921. And so Silchester became the family’s home.

In 1915, at the age of 60, Nathaniel applied for active service, returning as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the RoyalDefence Corps., in charge of prisoners of War at Alexandra Palace. He dies at home in Clarence Gate Gardens, Regents Park, of natural causes on 28th May 1917. After a funeal service with full military honoiurs in London, his coffin was carried on a gun carriage to a special train in Paddington. At Reading West, it was joined by the band of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, along with some 150 officers and men. At Bramley, the coffin was loaded onto another gun carriage and the contingent processed to Silchester Churchm where "Uncle Natty", as his niece wrote, was laid to rest, with the Last Post played by a bugler and one verse of Abide With Me played by the band."

Source:Silchester Parish Council

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Marylebone Mercury 09 June 1917.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]