John Talbot Clifton

John Talbot Clifton (1 December 1868 – 23 March 1928), known as Talbot Clifton, was an English landowner and traveller. He was born the son of Thomas Henry Clifton of Lytham Hall, Lancashire and his wife Madeline Agnew and was educated at Eton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He succeeded his grandfather, John Talbot Clifton (1819–1882), who had been MP for Lancashire and High Sheriff of Lancashire for 1853, as owner of the Lytham estate at the age of 14. He became a compulsive traveller who explored Canada, Siberia, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Africa and South America, and was known for shooting wild animals and eating them. Some of the animals he shot were species new to science and were named after him, such as a type of wild Siberian sheep (Clifton's bighorn) and a Canadian marmot. He once dined on mammoth recovered frozen from the Arctic permafrost. He married Violet Mary, the daughter of William Nelthorpe Beauclerk and granddaughter of the William Beauclerk, 8th Duke of St Albans on 1 February 1907 at Brompton Oratory. They had met in Peru, where she was also travelling. They lived at Lytham Hall and had two sons and three daughters. Talbot served as a Justice of the Peace for Lancashire.