John de Vere Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst, (5 February 1895 – 30 October 1970) was a British Army officer, politician and colonial administrator. After serving in the army, the Foreign Office, and as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons, Wakehurst was appointed as the last British Governor of New South Wales, which he held from 1937 to 1946. Upon returning to Britain he was appointed Governor of Northern Ireland from 1952 to 1964. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1962 and died in 1970. Early years Loder was born in London in February 1895, the only son of Conservative MP Gerald Loder, the fourth son of Sir Robert Loder, 1st Baronet and member of a prominent Sussex family, and Lady Louise de Vere Beauclerk, the daughter of the 10th Duke of St Albans and personal friend of Queen Victoria, who permitted Loder to be christened in the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace. Through his mother's family, he was descended from an illegitimate royal line of King Charles II. Loder was educated at Eton College, where he excelled in history and languages, with a particular interest in drama. Although originally intending to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, with the outbreak of the First World War, Loder was instead commissioned into the 4th Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment, and later joined the Intelligence Corps, seeing service throughout the war in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine. For his services, he was Mentioned in Despatches, and left the British Army in 1919 with the rank of captain. Loder worked as a clerk in the Foreign Office from 1919 to 1922 and then for two years at the League of Nations in Geneva. On 3 June 1920, he married Margaret "Peggy" Tennant, the daughter of prominent Liberal politician and businessman, Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet. Together they had four children: three sons, Christopher, David and Robert, and a daughter, Henrietta. Indulging in his interest in Egyptology, Loder wrote his first book: The Truth about Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. (1923). John and Peggy Loder travelled on a world tour in 1924, including a visit to Australia. Although initially unimpressed, describing Sydney as "afflicted with so much Victorian architecture of the worst kind", by the end he had warmed to the country, writing that Australia was "a splendid country with splendid people" possessing a "democratic