Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside
Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside GCB, CMG, DSO was a senior officer of the British Army, who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the first year of the Second World War.
Ironside was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, onMay 1880. His father, SurgeonMajor William Ironside of the Royal Horse Artillery, died shortly afterwards, leaving his widowed wife to bring up their son on a limited military pension. As the cost of living in the late nineteenth century was substantially lower in Europe than in Britain, she travelled extensively around the Continent, where the young Edmund began learning various foreign languages. This grasp of language would become one of the defining features of his character by middle age, he was fluent enough to officially interpret in seven, and was proficient in perhaps ten more.
Source: Wikipedia