Milo, Lord Talbot de Malahide (1912-72) was the last Lord Talbot to live in Malahide Castle on land that had been in the family since the 12th century. After his death, unmarried, in 1972 while on a cruise in Greece, his only sibling Rosie, who inherited, sold it to pay death duties. It was, thanks to Matt McNulty, acquired by Fingal County Council, which keeps the grounds as a local amenity while the house is open to visitors to absorb its rich history.
Brought up in England, Milo inherited when the previous Lord Talbot, a cousin, died in 1948. After Cambridge, Milo joined the UK Foreign Office, ending up as ambassador in Laos before retiring in his 40s. He worked mainly in counter-intelligence; in the early 1950s, he was second in command of the section charged to check on colleagues who were security risks.
On his watch, two colleagues were exposed as Soviet spies, but only after they had made a getaway to Russia; they were Cambridge contemporaries and friends of Milo, so fuelling unfounded allegations that he too might have been a spy. Both defecting diplomats were gay, one openly so; gay men were regarded thereafter as a security risk.
In retirement, Milo divided his time between Malahide and an estate he had inherited in Tasmania. He became a collector of rare plants, filling the garden in Malahide with specimens from Tasmania and elsewhere. These, together with a book he wrote on the flora of Tasmania, are his memorial.
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Last lord of Malahide Castle at centre of strange tale that reflects an era when being gay was unacceptable
It was in Tasmania in the late 1960s that Tony Scotland, a man in his early 20s coming to terms with his gay orientation, encountered Milo Talbot, who seems to have been a celibate homosexual, registering his feelings only in diaries. He befriended Scotland romantically, while at the same time steering him away from life as an active homosexual, even sending him to a psychiatrist who put him on conversion treatment.
The author, who became a renowned broadcaster, broke away shortly before Milo’s death and has lived in a stable gay relationship with a contemporary for 50 years. The strange story he tells reflects a society where an active gay life was unacceptable, even to many of that orientation.
