Britain's oldest peer Lord Oranmore and Browne who died on August 7th is believed to have been the longest-serving member of the House of Lords. He served for 72 years from 1927 until he was obliged to vacate his seat due to the Labour government's reforms of 1999.
Despite his lengthy membership of the Lords, he never spoke in the chamber and was better known for his three marriages, particularly to the heiress Oonagh Guinness and to the actress Sally Gray.
Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne was born in Dublin on October 21st, 1901, the eldest son of the 3rd Lord Oranmore and Browne and his wife, Olwen, daughter of the 8th Earl of Bessborough of Castle MacGarrett, Co Mayo.
The Brownes were old Galway Jacobite gentry and merchants who had been dispossessed during Cromwell's conquest of Ireland; an MP and Middle Temple barrister in the following generation recovered the 2,000 acres after the Restoration of Charles II.
The first Lord Oranmore and Browne was a 19th-century Whig MP who rebuilt Castle MacGarrett, and the second an Irish representative peer in the Lords.
The third was an Irish senator and one of the last knights of the Order of St Patrick, who was given the United Kingdom barony of Mereworth, which entitled him to sit in the Lords. Young Dominick divided his early years between Castle MacGarrett, which was set in a 3,000-acre estate, Mereworth Castle in Kent, and London.
He was the youngest page at the coronation of King George V, and was educated at Eton. After Christ Church, Oxford, he served briefly in the Grenadier Guards, earning a reputation as a fine shot.
He lost his parents when they were killed in a traffic accident at Southborough, Kent, in 1927. In 1930 Lord Oranmore and Browne sold the Mereworth estate to concentrate on running Castle MacGarrett, which had survived both the War of Independence and the Civil War when it was occupied by the Free State Army before being returned to the family.
This gave him a chance to take up flying, practising on a twin-engined Cutty-Sark which could alight on land or water. But with an estate that had a staff of 150 there were always difficulties making ends meet. When farm income slumped as a result of the economic war with Britain, he withheld his rate payments and in 1933 some of his cattle were seized.
Two years later a serious fire broke out in the castle. With the help of local people, Lord Oranmore and Browne managed to contain the fire, but furniture, paintings and other possessions were destroyed. In 1939, on the outbreak of the second World War, Lord Oranmore and Browne attempted to join the British army, but he was advised that he would be more useful concentrating on farming. This he did, serving with the part-time local defence force. Money was a constant problem and, in the 1960s, Lord Oranmore and Browne sought to put Castle MacGarrett on the tourist map. The castle was known for its shooting and fishing and he gave guided tours at five shillings a time. But living in the castle remained beyond his means.
In a last desperate effort to hang on, he devised a scheme of "arm-chair farming" whereby pigs were to be reared in the spacious drawing rooms and bedrooms. His reasoning was that a sow reared in such surroundings would sell for about 90 guineas on the market yielding a profit of about £55. But the hoped-for hordes of American pig owners, anxious to learn from this novel technique, never materialised.
Instead, the premises were compulsorily acquired by the Land Commission. Lord Oranmore and Browne then moved to live permanently in London.
Short, stocky and regarded as a lady's man, he married three times, first Mildred Helen, daughter of Thomas Egerton, a cousin of the Duke of Sutherland; they had two sons and three daughters (one of whom died aged 13). He was involved in a scandal in 1936 when his first wife sued him for divorce based on his affair with Oonagh, one of the three "Golden Guinness Girls", while she was married to Philip Kindersley. The former Mrs Kindersley was a wealthy heiress in her own right and owner of Luggala in Roundwood, Co Wicklow. She became Lady Oranmore and Browne that year. In 1943 the education of her son, Gay Kindersley whose father was then a prisoner-of-war, was the subject of legal proceedings.
She wanted him brought up in Ireland, but the Kindersleys objected ("We're not having him raised as a Sinn Féiner!") and insisted that their grandson should go to Eton.
The High Court in Dublin found in favour of the Kindersleys, and Lord Oranmore and Browne, a kindly stepfather, had the painful task of handing the boy over.
At Luggala Oonagh entertained artists, writers and poets including Brendan Behan, Claud Cockburn and Lucian Freud. Lord Oranmore and Browne was ill at ease in such company, but the lavish hospitality ensured that guests were unaware of his discomfort and they enjoyed their visits immensely.
The couple had three sons, the eldest of whom is Garech de Brun, the founder of Claddagh Records. The second son survived for only a week. The third was Tara Browne, an icon of the Swinging Sixties who died after driving his sports car into a lamp-post in Chelsea in 1966. The accident inspired The Beatles' A Day in the Life: "He blew his mind out in a car ..." After divorcing Oonagh in 1950, Lord Oranmore and Browne married Constance Vera Stevens, the actress Sally Gray who had been trained as a dancer by Fred Astaire and starred in the films Dangerous Moonlight (1940) and Green for Danger (1946). The marriage was only made public when the couple attended the coronation in 1953.
Known within his own circle as Dom-Dom, Lord Oranmore and Browne was appreciated for his charm and individuality.
His main sporting interests were hunting, shooting and fishing and, when circumstances permitted, he kept the odd racehorse in training. His 100th birthday was celebrated with a party at London's Ritz Hotel attended by his family and close friends. Delighted to receive a telegram from the President, Mrs McAleese, he was less than impressed by the card from Queen Elizabeth II, which featured a large photograph of her on the front and seemed to him undignified.
Lord Oranmore and Browne is survived by his wife Constance, by two sons and one daughter of his first marriage to Mildred Egerton and by Garech de Brun, the eldest son of his marriage to Oonagh Guinness. His titles pass to his eldest son, the poet Dominick Browne.
Lord Oranmore and Browne: born 1901; died, August 2002