John Nevile Manners

John Neville Manners (6 January 1892 – 1 September 1914) played cricket for Eton College in Fowler's match in 1910, and died in the early weeks of the First World War on the retreat from Mons. He was immortalised in poem LIV of The Muse in Arms by William Grenfell (brother of Julian Grenfell) entitled "To John".

The eldest son of John Manners-Sutton, 3rd Baron Manners, Manners was educated at Eton, played cricket in the Eton v Harrow match in 1910, and then studied at Balliol College, Oxford.

He joined the army in 1912 and served as an officer in the second battalion of the Grenadier Guards. He was sent to Belgium with the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914, but was killed in the rear-guard actions in the forests around Villers-Cotterêts on 1 September 1914. His platoon, in No. 4 Company, was part of the defensive force from the 4th (Guards) Brigade covering the retirement of the 2nd Infantry Division on the retreat from Mons. His platoon and a second platoon did not receive the order to retire and were cut off. Lieutenants Manners and George Edward Cecil and around 160 guardsmen were killed. His body was never located. A letter from Rudyard Kipling to Lady Edward Cecil records a conversation at Gatcombe House in December 1914 with the convalescent Private Walter Titcombe, who had served in Manners' platoon and claimed that Manners was shot through the head and died instantly.

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