Colonel The Honourable Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert DL (3 April 1880 – 26 September 1923), of Pixton Park in Somerset and of Teversal,[2][3] in Nottinghamshire,[4] was a British soldier, diplomat, traveller, and intelligence officer associated with Albanian independence.

From early childhood Aubrey developed eye problems which left him nearly blind, and resulted in a total loss of sight before the age of 40.

His friendship with Middle Eastern traveller and advisor Sir Mark Sykes dates from his entry into parliament in 1911 when, with George Lloyd, they were the three youngest Conservative MPs.

Herbert was in his own right a considerable Orientalist, and a linguist who spoke French, Italian, German, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and Albanian as well as English.

He was very active fighting for their cause and is regarded as having considerable influence on Albania's success at obtaining eventual independence in the resulting Treaty of London (1913).

In April 1921, the crown was, even more unofficially, offered to the Duke of Atholl by Jim Barnes of the British Friends of Albania residing in Italy.

[citation needed] Despite very poor eyesight, Herbert was able, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, to join the Irish Guards, in which he served in a supernumerary position.

He became famous for arranging a truce[18] of eight hours, on Whit Monday, 24 May, with the Turkish commander Mustafa Kemal, for the purpose of burying the dead.

It would appear that the Arab Bureau continued working along the lines of the memorandum,[23] which led to contrary promises ensuing accusations of bad faith.

When in February the War Office cleared him from involvement in Albania, he took up the offer and found himself in charge of Naval intelligence in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and the Gulf.

Following the critical situation of British troops at Kut-al-Amara, the War Office was instructed to offer Herbert's services to General Townshend to negotiate terms with the Turks.

The situation at Kut led Aubrey to send a telegram to Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, with the support of General Lake but still in breach of army regulations, condemning incompetence in the handling of the Mesopotamian campaign.

[24] Back in England in July 1916, Herbert started asking in the House of Commons for a Royal Commission to inquire into the conduct of the Mesopotamian campaign.

When the Bolsheviks published its secret provisions in 1917, he rejected the idea of Albania as merely a small Muslim state, the fiefdom he believed of Essad Pasha.

On 16 July, he conducted a series of meetings with the Turks in Geneva, Interlaken, and Bern, among them a (secret) representative of an influential anti-Enver group.

[14] Unclear policy led to nationalist criticism from imperial bases such as Egypt[33] (see Saad Zaghloul, 1919) at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, nor was the resulting political handling cause for much optimism to privileged witnesses such as Aubrey, T. E. Lawrence or Gertrude Bell.

At the conference, there was a glimpse of further prospect for Aubrey Herbert when the Italian delegates proposed to assume shared responsibility[34] over the Caucasus, an area of vital strategic importance[35] – the Baku oilfields, access from the north to Mosul and Kirkuk.

By May 1919, the Intelligence Directorate had changed hands, on the authority of Lord Curzon (acting foreign secretary while Arthur Balfour was negotiating in Paris) from Aubrey's chief General George Macdonogh to Sir Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard Special Branch i.e. from military to civilian in view of the Bolshevik threat on the home front.

[36] Thus it was possible for Aubrey in February 1921 to amaze a friend he could confide to, Lord Robert Cecil, that he was going abroad as a Scotland Yard inspector: he went to Berlin to interview Talaat Pasha for intelligence.

It had been a favoured retreat of Aubrey's elder brother the 5th Earl, but following their father's death it became the property of his step-mother Elsie Howard, who died there, having frequently entertained "eminent folks from the world of politics, religion (mainly Catholic, of course) and science".

Aubrey bequeathed the Villa to his wife Mary Vesey, and it later became "a veritable literary colony for poets, painters and writers", including their son-in-law Evelyn Waugh, Alfred Duggan, Peter Acton and Brooke Astor.

The 4th Viscount was a member of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, but together with his wife had converted to Roman Catholicism and the couple raised their children in that faith.

[47] His full-length recumbent effigy on a chest tomb with ceremonial sword above, survives in the Herbert Chapel in the Church of St Nicholas, Brushford, Somerset, near his seat at Pixton Park.