SirJohn Edward Nourse Heygate, 4thBaronet (19 April 1903 – 18 March 1976),^[1] was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist.

He is chiefly remembered for his liaison in 1929 withEvelyn Gardner while she was married toEvelyn Waugh. He is portrayed as "John Beaver" in Waugh'sA Handful of Dust^[2] and as "Sir Piers Tofield" inHenry Williamson'sChronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

Heygate was the son of Frances Harvey and Arthur Heygate, who was anEton Collegehousemaster and third son of the second baronet.^[1]

He was educated atEton College and graduated fromBalliol College, Oxford, with aBachelor of Arts degree. In 1926 he went toHeidelberg as a trainee for theForeign Office. He subsequently got a job as an assistant news editor at theBBC.^[3]

In the late 1920s Heygate was on the fringes of the group of socialites known as the "Bright Young People" and was friends with the authorAnthony Powell.^[4] In 1929 divorce proceedings began between Evelyn Waugh andthe HonourableEvelyn Gardner (a daughter ofthe 1st Baron Burghclere). Heygate was cited and hence was forced to resign from the BBC. (This scandal is said to be one reason why theBBC's first Director General,Reith, took a firm line against any of his staff being involved in a divorce.) In 1930 he married Gardner.^[1][5]

In 1932 he joined theGaumont-British Picture Corporation and worked in collaboration with the GermanUFA film company at theirBabelsberg Studio near Berlin. Of staunch right-wing views, he was present at the 1935Nuremberg Rally in the company of his friend the writerHenry Williamson.^[3] In neighbouring seats wereUnity Mitford,Diana Mitford and Dr.Frank Buchman.^[6]

Heygate and Gardner were divorced in 1936.^[1] In February of the same year, he remarried, to the Gaumont-British actressGwyneth Lloyd (of theLloyds Bank family^[7]). They subsequently moved toSussex. They had two sonsGeorge andRichard, both of whom eventually inherited the baronetcy.^[8]

Despite his political sympathies he served as abombardier in theRoyal Artillery during the Second World War. He wrote the bookThese Germans, published in 1940.

He succeeded to the title of 4thBaronet, of Southend, Essex, on 14 January 1940. Heygate and Lloyd divorced in 1947. He married again in 1951 to Dora Harvey. She died in 1968.^[9] By the 1970s he was living alone inBellarena,^[10]County Londonderry.^[11]

In 1976 Heygate committed suicide by shooting himself. He was 72.^[2]

His books comprise:^[12]

• Decent Fellows (1930), apublic school novel.
• White Angel (1934)
• Talking Picture^[3] (Jonathan Cape, 1934), a semi-autobiographical novel dealing with experiences inWeimarBerlin, similar toChristopher Isherwood'sI Am a Camera.
• Motor Tramp^[13] (Jonathan Cape, 1935), a factual account of tours in anMG motor car, including a visit toNazi Germany.
• A House for Joanna (1937). A tale of life on the Sussex coast.^[14]
• These Germans: An estimate of their character seen in flashes from the drama, 1918–1939 (1940)
• Love and Death (1943)
• Kurumba (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949). Described as:A raffish, intelligent tale of a soldier and his native mistress, set in the imaginary Kurumba, somewhere on the Indian sub-continent, during the second world war.^[15]

Heygate is credited^[16] as a co-writer on the following films, made in Germany and starringLilian Harvey:

• The Only Girl (Ich und die Kaiserin) (1934)
• Black Roses (Schwarze Rosen) (1935)