William Henry Grenfell, 1st Baron Desborough (30 October 1855 – 9 January 1945) was a British athlete, sportsman, public servant and politician.

Grenfell was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating from the latter in 1879 and receiving the honorary degree of DCL from the university in 1938.

[1] He won the silver medal for fencing in the event of team épée at the 1906 Intercalated Games,[3] having been the first person to carry the flag for Great Britain in the parade of nations.

[1] He was President of the Amateur Fencing Association from its foundation until 1926, Marylebone Cricket Club based at Lords, the Lawn Tennis Association based at Wimbledon, and was president and chairman of the Bath Club from its foundation in 1894 until 1942, and chairman of the Pilgrims of Great Britain from 1919 to 1929.

Grenfell was the Mayor of Maidenhead in 1895 and 1896 and an extremely wealthy and competent businessman who owned more than 10,000 acres of land around the town.

Grenfell became one of the earliest 63 members of the club, and its first president and agreed to present “a challenge cup for competition”.

Politically he was a Gladstonian (loyal) Liberal who resigned in 1893 rather than support Gladstone's Second Irish Home Rule Bill.

During a long career dedicated to public service, he was President of the Thames Conservancy Board from 1904 to 1937, the London Chamber of Commerce, and the Royal Agricultural Society, amongst many others.

[10] In 1919, he presided over the Desborough Committee which investigated the conditions that led to the crippling London Police Strike of August 1918.

[11] In November 1914, he was appointed President of the Central Association of Volunteer Training Corps, a voluntary home defence militia,[12] until it was disbanded in 1920.

He planned and oversaw the construction of the Desborough Cut, a navigation channel between nearby stretches of the Thames at Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge, which was opened in 1935.

The family lived at Taplow Court, where he and his wife hosted gatherings of the elite and aristocratic group, the 'Souls', adjacent on the riverside to Cliveden, which is a slightly grander country estate, but which saw its social heyday immediately after, from 1920 to 1965.

Margot Asquith, whose husband would later be politically aligned against Desborough, said of her, "She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake".