Like many classic car enthusiasts, I have a well-thumbed copy of Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin’s 1932 autobiography Full Throttle on my shelf. While re-reading the sections on the great Le Mans battles of the late 1920s, I kept coming across references to a driver named “André d’Erlanger” who raced works Bentleys alongside the legendary Bentley Boys. This prompted me to dig deeper into my own family connections — and what I uncovered was a fascinating personal link.
Charlotte Denman’s own brother, Henry Roland Casimir d’Erlanger (known in racing circles as André), was a well-known racing driver in the roaring 1920s. He competed alongside the legendary “Bentley Boys” at Le Mans and also drove for Lagonda. Here’s his story.
Henry Roland Casimir d’Erlanger was born on 24 November 1895 at Somerley, Hampshire, the eldest child of Raphael Slidell d’Erlanger and Marie Carola Blennerhassett. (His sister Charlotte Marie Mathilde, who later married Roderick Denman, was born in 1897.) The 1920 electoral register for Knightsbridge shows Henry Roland and his first cousin Leo Frédéric Alfred d’Erlanger living together at 24 Rutland Gate — a grand family property long associated with the d’Erlangers. The two young men, then in their early-to-mid twenties, clearly shared a close bond and quite possibly a common passion for fast cars that drew one into competitive racing while the other built a notable collection of Bugattis.
Racing with the Bentley Works Team
André d’Erlanger joined the Bentley works team for two memorable outings at the 24 Hours of Le Mans:
• In 1927, he shared a Bentley 3 Litre (chassis YF 2503) with co-driver George Duller. The team practised hood-raising drills and started strongly, but the car suffered an accident late in the race. Period sources and Bentley histories record them as finishing 17th (some modern databases list it as a DNF due to the incident, but the classified result stands in many contemporary accounts).
• In 1929, he teamed up with Dr Dudley Benjafield in a Bentley 4½ Litre. That year the Bentley Boys dominated, sweeping the top four places. D’Erlanger and Benjafield crossed the line in an impressive 3rd overall.
He also drove for Lagonda in 1928, sharing a 2 Litre Speed Model with Wallace Douglas Hawkes as lead driver. They achieved a solid 11th place overall at Le Mans that year.
Beyond the Track: Aviation, Writing, and a Tragic End
Henry Roland had a long-standing interest in flying. He served briefly in the RAF during the First World War (as a 2nd Lieutenant, discharged in January 1919) and gained his Royal Aero Club aviator’s certificate in June 1934.
In 1936, writing under the family name Harry d’Erlanger, he published The Last Plague of Egypt, a serious non-fiction book examining the international narcotics trade with particular focus on hashish trafficking in Egypt and the Middle East. This shows yet another facet of his adventurous and intellectually curious character.
Tragically, his love of aviation cut his life short. On 2 January 1937, at the age of 41, he was flying solo in his newly acquired General Aircraft ST-25 Monospar Jubilee (registration G-ADMD). The journey had begun from London’s Gatwick Airport, with an intended stop at winter sports near Lomaso in northern Italy.
After diverting for fog and continuing from France, the aircraft suffered a fuel-supply problem during the final approach to land. While attempting a forced landing, it struck trees. Henry Roland sustained a serious head wound; local witnesses who rushed to the scene found him alive and he reportedly spoke briefly to them in English before succumbing to his injuries. He was buried in Trento on 6 January 1937.
He is also remembered with the title Baron Henry Rowland of Cabasson (Barmes, Var) in probate records — a reminder of the wider European connections of the d’Erlanger family.
A Note on Earlier Confusion
For many years the exact identity of “André d’Erlanger” puzzled even dedicated Bentley historians.
In his 1932 book Full Throttle, Tim Birkin referred to the driver once as ‘Leo d’Erlanger’ when describing the 1929 Le Mans entry shared with Benjafield. Given that Birkin knew both Henry Roland and his first cousin Leo quite well — all three were enthusiastic racing-car fans moving in the same social circles — this appears to be a simple slip of memory rather than a substantive error. The confusion was later repeated in some secondary sources, but specialist Le Mans databases and family-history research, particularly the December 2022 article in The Tiger, have now clearly established that the racer was Henry Roland Casimir d’Erlanger — Charlotte’s brother — who competed under the pseudonym André.
Finding this connection — from my distant d’Erlanger relative racing at Le Mans with the Bentley works team to Charlotte’s own brother — has been one of the most thrilling parts of my family research. The “André” in the textbooks was Henry Roland all along.
Looking ahead:
Interestingly, the family’s entanglement with the Bentley world didn’t end with Henry Roland’s drives at Le Mans. Further digging revealed even wider connections — including a direct link through marriage to the engineer who designed the supercharger for the famous Blower Bentleys, plus ties to other legendary Bentley Boys such as Woolf Barnato, Captain Tim Birkin, and to Dorothy Paget who financed the Blower project. That story comes in Part 3.
References:
“A sign in Anzac Cove” by Lynn Roffee, Issue 133, December 2022, The Tiger,
The Tiger is the quarterly newsletter/magazine of the Leicester and Rutland Branch of the Western Front Association.
“Full Throttle” by Sir Henry (Tim) Birkin, Motoraces Book Club, G.T. Foulis & Co. Ltd, London, 1964