British art historian, museum director and writer John Pope-Hennessy was BOTD in 1913. Born in London to an Irish military family, he was educated at private schools and studied at Oxford University, where he was mentored by the art historian Kenneth Clark. After completing his Grand Tour of Europe, he worked as a flight lieutenant for the British Air Ministry during World War Two. After the war, he became an academic, drawing critical praise for his three-volume Introduction to Italian Sculpture, leading to a professorship in fine at Cambridge University. In 1967, he became director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, following by a three-year tenure as director of the British Museum. In 1974, his gay younger brother James was brutally murdered by three young men he had invited back to his flat, in what is thought to have been a gay-bashing. Traumatised by James’ death, he moved to New York City, where he became head of European painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and published highly-regarded critical studies of artists Benvenuto Cellini, Donatello, Piero Della Francesca and Andrea Mantegna. He retired in 1988, moving to Italy with his long-term partner Michael Mallon, taking up residence at the Palazzo Canigiani in Florence and amassing a priceless collection of Renaissance art. He died in 1994, aged 80.