William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench, 8th Earl of Clancarty, 7th Marquess of Heusden (18 September 191118 May 1995) was a prominent ufologist. He was an Irish peer, as well as a nobleman in the Dutch nobility. Biography He was the fifth son of William Frederick Le Poer Trench, 5th Earl of Clancarty by Mary Gwatkin Ellis. He had four older half-brothers born to the 5th Earl's first wife, Isabel Maud Penrice Bilton, the actress known as Belle Bilton, who died of cancer in 1906. Brinsley was educated at the Pangbourne Nautical College. From 1956 to 1959 Clancarty edited the Flying Saucer Review and founded the International Unidentified Object Observer Corps. He also found employment selling advertising space for a gardening magazine housed opposite Waterloo station. In 1967, he founded Contact International and served as its first president. He also served as vice-president of the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA). Clancarty was an honorary life member of the now defunct Ancient Astronauts Society which supported the ideas put forward by Erich von Däniken in his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?. In 1975 he succeeded to the earldom on the death of his half-brother, Grenville Sydney Rocheforte, 7th Earl of Clancarty, giving him a seat in the British Parliament. He used his new position to found a UFO Study Group at the House of Lords, introducing Flying Saucer Review to its library and pushing for the declassification of UFO data. Four years later he organised a celebrated debate in the House of Lords on UFOs which attracted many speeches on both sides of the question. In one debate, Lord Strabolgi, for the Government, declared that there was nothing to convince him that any alien spacecraft had ever visited the Earth. Private life Clancarty first married, in 1940, Diana (1919–1999), daughter of Sir William Younger, Bt. This marriage was dissolved in 1947. He married secondly, in 1961, Mrs Wilma Belknap (née Vermilyea) (1915–1995) and that marriage was dissolved in 1969. His third marriage was in 1974, to Mrs Mildred Allewyn Spong (née Bensusan) (1895–1975). She died in 1975 but Clancarty remarried a fourth time, in 1976, to Mrs May Beasley (née Radonicich) (1904–2003). He lived most of his life in South Kensington and died in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1995, leaving his extensive collection of papers to Contact International. He was succeeded to the earldom by his nephew Nicholas Le Poer Trench (b.