Лионель Кертис: Британский государственный деятель и идеолог Содружества.

British official and writer

Lionel George Curtis CH (1872–1955) was a British internationalist and author. He was the inspiration for the foundation of Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) as well as the US Council On Foreign Relations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He was a leading member of Round Table movement. His writings and influence caused the evolution of the former British nations into the Commonwealth.

Curtis was born in 1872 at The Outwoods, Derby, his mother's family home, and later moved to Coddington, Herefordshire, the youngest of the four children of George James Curtis, Anglican rector of the parish, and his wife Frances Carr, daughter of the Rev. John Edmund Carr. He was educated at Haileybury College and then at New College, Oxford, where he read law. He fought in the Second Boer War with the City Imperial Volunteers.

Curtis served as secretary to Lord Milner (a position that had also been held by adventure novelist John Buchan), during which time he dedicated himself to working for a united self governing South Africa. He with a group of bright young men there, who would later make their mark in international roles, were called Milner's Kindergarten. Following Milner's death in 1925, Curtis became the second leader of Milner's Kindergarten until his own death in 1955.

Curtis was an original founding member with Lord Milner of the Round Table Movement. Curtis was also a founder (1910) the international quarterly The Round Table.

He was appointed (1912) Beit lecturer in colonial history at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College.