Edward Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet, (20 March 1879 – 11 July 1960) was a British politician and writer. Family and early life Young was the youngest son of Sir George Young, 3rd Baronet (see Young baronets), a noted classicist and charity commissioner. Sir George's paternal grandmother was Emily Baring of the eponymous merchant banking dynasty. Hilton's mother, formerly Alice Eacy Kennedy, was of Dublin Irish Protestant background and had previously lived in India as Lady Lawrence, wife of Sir Alexander Lawrence, Bt, nephew to the Viceroy, Lord Lawrence. Widowed when Sir Alexander died in a bridge collapse, Alice returned to England, marrying Sir George in 1871. Hilton was the youngest of three sons and one daughter (who died aged 14) born to the couple. The oldest brother, also George, would become a diplomat and Ottoman scholar. The next brother, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, became a noted educator and mountaineer. Their childhood was spent at the family's Thames-side 'Formosa' estate, at Cookham, Berkshire. On visits to their London house near Sloane Square, Hilton would often play in Kensington Gardens with the children of Sir George's friend, Sir Leslie Stephen. In this way, he commenced a close friendship with his contemporary Thoby Stephen, and became acquainted with Thoby's siblings, Vanessa, Virginia, and Adrian. At his preparatory school, Northaw Place, in 1892 Young took pity on nine-year-old Clement Attlee on the latter's first day at school, offering the newcomer jam from his own pot. His secondary schooling commenced at Marlborough but incessant bullying saw him transferred to Eton where he joined the army stream which emphasised science rather than the classics. After two terms studying chemistry at University College London, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1897, graduating in 1900 with a 'first' in natural sciences and having achieved the office of president of the Union Society. Early career Post-Cambridge he read for the Bar and was called by the Inner Temple in 1904. However, after receiving few briefs and suffering a nervous breakdown, he transferred to financial journalism. In 1908 he was appointed assistant editor of The Economist, resigning in 1910 to become city editor of The Morning Post. His 1912 work Foreign Companies and Other Corporations combined his legal and financial knowledge to examine the status of companies created in one national jurisdiction which operate in other jurisdictions. At Cambridge, through Thoby Stephen, he became acquainted with key