[1] John and Beatrice travelled to the United States in the summer of 1934, sailing back to Britain aboard the RMS Aquitania in October.
Upon returning from Germany, Rathbone called a meeting in his constituency to announce that he was joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.
A flight lieutenant and fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force, he was killed shortly after the Battle of Britain, on 10 September 1940.
His readiness to serve his country and before war came to prepare himself is typical of his high sense of duty ; and the example he set among those with whom he came in contact remains a truly noble inspiration.Rathbone was the nephew of Eleanor Rathbone, who had been an independent MP for the Combined English Universities between 1929 and 1946, and a staunch women's rights campaigner.
[1] His younger brother, Henry Stephen Nicholas Rathbone, served as a captain in the Scots Guards and was killed at Monte Cassino on 9 November 1943.