Gyles Isham

Gyles Isham, formally Sir Gyles Isham, 12th Baronet, was an English aristocrat, actor, and historian born on 31 October 1903 in Lamport, Northamptonshire, England. The son of Sir Vere Isham, 11th Baronet of Lamport, and his wife Millicent Vaughan, Isham was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he served as President of the Oxford Union in 1926 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, later promoted to Master of Arts in 1930.

Isham's acting career took him to Broadway between 1927 and 1928, where he appeared in three productions: The Cherry Orchard, And So To Bed, and The Queen's Husband. Returning to England, he performed in Shakespeare productions from 1929 to 1938 at venues including the Old Vic Theatre in London and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He also pursued a film career between 1933 and 1937, appearing in ten pictures. His roles included Nixon in Anne One Hundred (1933), James Willmore in Purse Strings (1933), the Czar of Russia in The Iron Duke (1934), and Levin in the 1935 production of Anna Karenina, which received considerable acclaim.

During the Second World War, Isham enlisted in the British Army and was commissioned as an officer into the King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1940. He served in Libya as part of the Western Desert Campaign, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel by 1943. While stationed in Libya in 1941, he succeeded to the Baronetcy of Lamport following the death of his father, becoming Sir Gyles Isham. After the war, he served as Defence Secretary Officer in Palestine.

Isham subsequently returned to public and civic life in Northamptonshire. He stood as the Conservative Party candidate for Kettering in the 1950 General Election, finishing second. He was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Northamptonshire in 1952, served on the Northamptonshire County Council from 1955 to 1964, and held the position of High Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1958. In 1964 he became a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, and from 1968 to 1976 he served as president of the Association of Genealogists.

Throughout his later years, Isham devoted considerable attention to the history of Northamptonshire, producing several books and pamphlets on the subject. His publications included The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham 1650-1660, issued by the Northamptonshire Record Society in 1954, and The Triangular Lodge: Rushton, Northamptonshire, published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1970. He also annotated the 1971 translation by Norman Marlow of The Diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport (1658-81). In 1974 he opened Lamport Hall, the family manor, to the public for the first time and established the Lamport Hall Trust, to which the property passed upon his death. Isham died on 29 January 1976 at St. Matthew's Nursing Home in Northampton, England, at the age of 72. He had no children and was succeeded as baronet by Sir Ian Isham, a distant cousin descended from the 7th baronet.