language doing classes at Windsor Castle. Sassoon was taught aesthetics by Henry Luxmoore giving an insight into philosophy and social realism. However he chose to read Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. He was one of only 25 Jewish undergraduates, but was invited to join the Bullingdon Club. He joined the East Kent Yeomanry while still at Oxford and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Philip Sassoon entered Parliament in 1912. After the death of his relative David Gubbay (1865–1928), Sassoon became chairman of his family's company, David Sassoon & Co., although his participation in the management of it was only nominal. However, he continued to be a shareholder. A 2016 biography, Charmed Life: The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon by Damian Collins, his successor as Member of Parliament for Hythe, provides a great deal of additional information about Sassoon. A summary by The Guardian includes this comment:Sassoon enjoyed witty gossip, but was never spiteful. He spoke with a clipped sibilant lisp, and liked to relax in a blue silk smoking jacket with slippers of zebra hide. He had fickle, moody fascinations with young men with whom he soon grew bored, but was loyally appreciative of female friends and kept an inner court of elderly, cultivated, ironical bachelors. His sexuality was central to his character and activities, but there is never any hint of sexual activity in the many memories of him. One hates to think that he was as sublimated as he sounds. His restlessness and fatalism, which were notorious among his friends, killed him at the age of 50 in 1939: although his physicians ordered bed rest after a viral infection, he hurtled about in unnecessary gaieties until his body was beyond recovery. First World War Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig during the First World War from 1915 to 1918. Sassoon was present at the meeting on 1 December 1914 at the Chateau Demont at Merville in France, when King George V and Edward Prince of Wales met with Raymond Poincaré, President of France, and the Generals Joseph Joffre, Ferdinand Foch and Sir Henry Rawlinson. The allies showed their determination to fight Germany and the Central Powers. Because of his "numerous social and political connections", Sassoon, at that time a second lieutenant in the Royal East Kent Yeomanry, was in attendance. A square bronze plaque commemorating the occasion was auctioned in 2012.