When people hear the name "Faithfull," they usually think of the smoky-voiced icon of the 1960s, Marianne. They think of the Rolling Stones, the black lace, and the heartbreak. But honestly, the man who started it all—Major Robert Glynn Faithfull—was arguably more eccentric, brilliant, and mysterious than his famous daughter ever was. He wasn't just a British Army officer. He was a spy, a scholar of the Italian Renaissance, a communal living pioneer, and the son of a man who invented a "sexual machine" to cure frigidity.
Basically, the Faithfull family tree is wild.
If you've ever wondered why Marianne Faithfull always seemed to possess a certain aristocratic grit and intellectual depth, you have to look at Glynn. Most people get his story wrong, reducing him to a footnote in a rock star's biography. But Robert Glynn Faithfull was a man who lived several lives at once: one in the shadows of wartime intelligence and another in the experimental fringes of social research.
The Secret Life of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull
Born in 1912, Glynn Faithfull grew up in a household that was anything but ordinary. His father, Theodore Faithfull, was a psychiatrist and sexologist who believed in radical theories that would make even a modern therapist's head spin. Growing up with a dad who studied sexual psychology in the early 20th century meant Glynn was raised with a level of openness—and perhaps oddness—that shaped his entire worldview.
By the time the Second World War broke out, Glynn was a lecturer in Italian at Liverpool University. But the British government had other plans for a man who was a multilinguist and an academic.
He was recruited into the Intelligence Corps. This is where the legend of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull really begins.
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Spying and Love in Post-War Vienna
As an intelligence officer, Glynn’s job was to interrogate prisoners of war and gather information from abroad. It was during this high-stakes work that he crossed paths with the Sacher-Masoch family. If that name sounds familiar, it should—Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is the man whose name gave us the word "masochism."
Glynn met Alexander von Sacher-Masoch, an anti-Nazi activist, and eventually fell for Alexander’s sister, the Baroness Eva Erisso.
Their romance sounds like something out of a grainy black-and-white film. Eva was a ballerina with the Max Reinhardt company, a glamorous woman trapped in the wreckage of post-war Vienna. Glynn married her in 1946 and brought her back to England. Marianne was born in Hampstead shortly after.
However, the marriage didn't last. Honestly, they were two people from completely different worlds who were brought together by the chaos of war. Eva later admitted she mostly married him for a British passport to escape the Soviet-occupied zone. By 1952, they had separated, leaving a young Marianne to navigate the distance between her mother’s fading aristocratic dreams and her father’s increasingly experimental life.
Why Major Robert Glynn Faithfull Still Matters
After the army and the divorce, Glynn didn't just return to a quiet life of grading papers. He became a founding member of the Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research.
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Imagine a Gothic manor in the Chiltern Hills where people lived communally to study "the dynamics of people living in groups." It was a precursor to the 1960s communes, but with a more academic, "British gentleman" vibe. Glynn was a successor to Dr. Norman Glaister, the founder, and spent decades there trying to figure out how humans could live together more peacefully.
Marianne would often visit him there. It’s a strange image: the future "Queen of the 60s" running around an experimental social research community while her father debated the finer points of the Italian Renaissance.
A Man of Contradictions
What most people miss is that Major Robert Glynn Faithfull was a bridge between the old Victorian world and the radical 20th century. He was a Major in the British Army, yet he was deeply suspicious of traditional religious education.
When Eva tried to enroll Marianne in a Catholic convent school, Glynn was reportedly furious. He believed it would "upset her understanding of sex" for the rest of her life. He was a man who valued intellectual and sexual freedom above all else, which is a bit ironic considering how tumultuous his daughter's public life became.
The Real Legacy of Glynn Faithfull
Glynn died in February 1998 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, at the age of 86. He left behind a legacy that is often overshadowed by the glitz of the music industry, but it’s a legacy of genuine intellectual curiosity.
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He wasn't just "Marianne’s dad." He was:
- A scholar who understood the Italian Renaissance better than almost anyone in his field.
- A brave intelligence officer who navigated the literal and figurative ruins of Europe.
- A social pioneer who stayed committed to communal living until the very end.
He eventually remarried a woman named Margaret Kipps and had more children, living out his later years as a respected (if slightly eccentric) academic.
Actionable Insights from a Life Well-Lived
If there is anything to learn from the life of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, it’s that history is never as simple as a Wikipedia entry makes it look.
- Look beyond the celebrity connection. If you're researching a historical figure, always look at their parents. Usually, that’s where the "weird" and the "wonderful" start.
- Value the polymath. Glynn was a spy, a teacher, a father, and a researcher. We live in a world that asks us to pick one lane. He chose five.
- Research the primary sources. If you want to know the truth about Glynn, read Marianne Faithfull’s 1994 autobiography, Faithfull. She doesn't hold back on the complexities of their relationship.
Ultimately, Glynn was a man who preferred the laboratory of life over the comfort of convention. Whether he was interrogating soldiers or debating social theory at Braziers Park, he remained a true original.
To understand the 20th century, you have to understand the people like Major Robert Glynn Faithfull—the ones who operated in the background but provided the intellectual spark for everything that came after. He was a man of his time, and yet, completely ahead of it.
If you are ever in Oxfordshire, you can find his grave at St. Mary the Virgin Cemetery in Ipsden. It's a quiet spot for a man who lived such a loud, layered life.
Next Steps for Deep Research:
If you want to dive deeper into the world Glynn created, look up the history of Braziers Park. It’s still running today as a community and adult college. Understanding the "Integrative Social Research" movement will give you a much clearer picture of the world Glynn was trying to build after the horrors of World War II. You can also explore the works of his father, Theodore Faithfull, to see how the family's radical views on psychology influenced the later "Summer of Love" generation.