D'Arcy Osborne, 12th Duke of Leeds

[2] When Italy declared war on the United Kingdom in 1940, Osborne, accredited to the Holy See but living in Italian territory, moved inside the Vatican according to arrangements made under the Lateran Treaty.

With a few exceptions, Osborne would be immured inside the Vatican until the liberation of Rome in 1944, working under difficult conditions from a pilgrim hostel attached to the Convent of Santa Marta.

Using the code name "Mount", he was one of the group, which he supported with his own money, led by Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty and a French diplomat François de Vial who helped conceal some 4,000 escapees, whether Jews or Allied soldiers, from the Nazis: 3,925 survived the war.

Apart from the restraining influence of my clothing [he was disguised as a monsignor] I was almost overwhelmed by an atmosphere of old-world English courtliness and grace which I had thought belonged only to the country-house parties of long ago.

Sir D'Arcy was spry, trim, a young sixty, but he had spent years enough in the diplomatic service to develop an astonishing aptitude for creating around himself an aura of all that was most civilized in English life.

[7] Pope Paul VI, who had sent his personal chamberlain to visit Osborne's residence daily during his final illness, expressed his condolences, as did Cardinal Cicognani, the papal Secretary of State.

Osborne kept an extensive diary, portions of which were used by Owen Chadwick as the basis of his 1980 Ford Lectures and his 1988 book, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War.

Chadwick's quotations from Osborne's diary included: "I reached the grave conclusion during the Mass that I am nothing but a pencilled marginal note in the Book of Life.