Our third cousin once removed, Stephen Philp was born in September 1923 at Watford, Hertfordshire. He was the elder of the two sons of Captain Robert Charles Penny Philp MC, a company director and his wife Florence Myrtil Campbell.

Stephen Philp’s father Robert died on 29 June 1950 and left effects valued £14,228 17s 1d to his widow, Florence Myrtle Philp, and his sons Stephen Philp and Andrew Arthur Philp, both farmers.

On 10 October 1953, at Christchurch in Hampshire, Stephen Philp married Iona Rebecca Trollope, the widow of Lt-Col. Cleveland Mervyn Keble, OBE. She was the daughter of Lt. Col. Sir Arthur Grant Trollope, 13th Baronet Trollope and his wife Anna Georgina Prestage and was also was the second cousin twice removed of the novelist Anthony Trollope.

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters.

Trollope’s literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he had regained the esteem of critics by the mid-20th century.

The Chronicles of Barsetshire

The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by English author Anthony Trollope, published between 1855 and 1867. They are set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester. The novels concern the dealings of the clergy and the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social manoeuvrings that go on among them.

A series was not planned when Trollope began writing The Warden. Rather, after creating Barsetshire, he found himself returning to it as the setting for his following works. It wasn’t until 1878, 11 years after The Last Chronicle of Barset, that these six novels were collectively published as the Chronicles of Barset.

By many, this series is regarded as Trollope’s finest work. Both modern and contemporary critics have praised the realism of the Barsetshire county and the intricacies of its characters. However, Trollope also received criticism, particularly for his plot development and the use of an intrusive narrative voice.

The series has been adapted for television in The Barchester Chronicles (1982) and Doctor Thorne (2016), and as dramatised radio programmes produced by BBC Radio 4. Author Angella Thirkell continued writing novels set in Barsetshire throughout the twentieth century.