Christian Darnton

Philip Christian Darnton (born Philip Christian von Schunck; 30 October 1905 – 14 April 1981), also known as Baron von Schunck, was a British composer and writer. Early life and family He was born in Leeds as Philip Christian von Schunck, the son of Mary Gertrude Illingworth (1871-1952) and John Edward, Baron von Schunk (1869–1940), a landowner who renounced his title before the First World War. Christian's paternal grandfather, Edward, Baron von Schunck, had been born in Leipzig, part of an old German family that had, since 1715, held a Barony in the Holy Roman Empire (Freiherr). He settled in Britain and married Kate Lupton, who had been born into the progressive, land-owning and political Lupton family and educated at the school of her relative Rachel Martineau. Edward died in 1889. Kate survived him until 1913, the eve of the First World War, and insisted in her will that their only son – John Edward, Baron von Schunck – change his surname to that of her father, Darnton Lupton, the former Mayor of Leeds. Thus he and his children acquired by Royal Licence the surname Darnton. Christian Darnton's father, John Edward, had two sisters; one of whom – Florence von Schunck – had married Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale of Gledhow Hall, near Leeds in 1890. Baroness von Schunck (née Kate Lupton, d. 1913), lived at the adjacent Gledhow Wood Estate which was where she hosted the wedding breakfast of her daughter and son-in-law. The family was extremely well-off and he was educated at home by a governess until he was nine, when he began composing; his musical talents being "obvious" by the time he went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1924. Darnton's teachers included Charles Wood and Cyril Rootham at Cambridge, and Harry Farjeon at the Royal Academy of Music, where he became friendly with his fellow student Walter Leigh. In 1928 he also spent a year studying with Max Butting in Berlin.