David K. E. Bruce

Bruce was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William Cabell Bruce and Louise Este (Fisher) Bruce (1864–1945). One of his three brothers was James Cabell Bruce. He studied for a year and a half at Princeton University. He dropped out to serve in the United States Army during World War I. At parental insistence, he then attended the University of Virginia School of Law (1919–1920) and the University of Maryland School of Law (1920–1921) without taking a degree before being admitted to the Maryland bar in November 1921.[2]

On May 29, 1926, Bruce married Ailsa Mellon, the daughter of the banker and diplomat Andrew W. Mellon.[10] They divorced on April 20, 1945. Their only daughter, Audrey, and her husband, Stephen Currier, were presumed dead when a plane in which they were flying in the Caribbean disappeared on January 17, 1967, after requesting permission to fly over Culebra, a U. S. Navy installation. No trace of the plane, pilot, or passengers was ever found. Audrey and Stephen Currier left three children: Andrea, Lavinia, and Michael.

He married Evangeline Bell (1914–1995)[11] on April 23, 1945, three days after his divorce.[10][12] She was a granddaughter of Sir Herbert Conyers Surtees, a niece of Sir Patrick Ramsay, a stepdaughter of Ambassador Sir James Leishman Dodds, and the elder sister of Virginia Surtees (who married, and divorced, Sir Henry Ashley Clarke, the British Ambassador to Italy).[13] They had two sons and one daughter, Alexandra (called Sasha). Alexandra died under mysterious circumstances (possibly murder or suicide) in 1975 at age 29 at the Bruce family home in Virginia.[14][15]

Bruce purchased and restored Staunton Hill, his family's former estate in Charlotte County, Virginia.

He died on December 5, 1977 of a heart attack at Georgetown University Medical Center.[16] He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.[17]

Bruce received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with Distinction, in 1976.

The David K.E. Bruce Award was established in 2007 at the American School in London.[8]

Bruce wrote a book of biographical essays on the American presidents originally published as Seven Pillars of the Republic (1936). He later expanded it as Revolution to Reconstruction (1939) and again revised it as Sixteen American Presidents (1962).

• William Cabell Bruce
• James Cabell Bruce
• List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

External video
Presentation by Nelson Lankford on The Last American Aristocrat, August 23, 1996, C-SPAN

• Colman, Jonathan. "The London Ambassadorship of David KE Bruce During the Wilson-Johnson Years, 1964–68." Diplomacy and Statecraft 15.2 (2004): 327-352. online
• Lankford, Nelson D. The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of David K. E. Bruce, 1898–1977 (1996).
• Lankford, Nelson D., ed. OSS against the Reich: The World War II Diaries of Colonel David K. E. Bruce (1991).
• Young, John W. "David K. E. Bruce, 1961–69." in The Embassy in Grosvenor Square (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2012), 153-170.

• First Chapter of 'The Last American Aristocrat' published by the Washington Post with permission of the author
• Review of the book, "The Last American Aristocrat" from The Washington Monthly magazine
• Oral history interview with David K. E. Bruce, 1 March 1972, at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library
• David K. E. Bruce's archives at the "Fondation Jean Monnet"