Shattered by the death of his wife Jessica (née Gordon) in childbirth, he sold his stake in Vanity Fair in 1887 for £20,000.

Bowles (nicknamed Jehu Junior after a biblical prophet who effected the downfall of his enemies) compiled the biographical notes that went with the caricatures.

He was editor for twenty years and shaped magazine policy so that no-one was exempt from his enquiring eye.

[4] The targets of Jehu Junior's satire usually considered themselves honoured to have been chosen, and although the scrutiny was acute, it was humorous rather than malicious.

[7] In 1912, Bowles brought (and personally argued) a claim in the High Court against the Bank of England, in which he succeed in establishing that the long-standing practice of informally collecting income tax before the act of Parliament imposing it for the year had been passed was unlawful.

5. c. 3), which for the first time authorised taxes to be collected on the basis of Budget resolutions passed by the House of Commons (a procedure that remains in place to this day).

[4] Through his elder daughter Sydney, he was a grandfather of Nancy, Pamela, Thomas, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah Mitford.