BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN (1840—1922), English poet, diplomat and publicist, was born on the 17th of August 1840 at Pictworth House, Sussex, the son of Francis Scawen Blunt, who served in the Peninsular War and was wounded at Corunna. He was educated at Stonyhurst and Oscott, and entered the diplomatic service in 1858, serving successively at Athens, Madrid, Paris and Lisbon. In 1867 he was sent to South America, and on his return to England retired from the service on his marriage with Lady Anne Noel, daughter of the earl of Lovelace and a granddaughter of the poet Byron.

In 1872 he succeeded, by the death of his elder brother, to the estate of Crabbet Park, Sussex, where he established a famous stud for the breeding of Arab horses, along with his wife Lady Anne, Blunt travelled repeatedly in northern Africa, Asia Minor and Arabia, two of their expeditions being described   In 1875; journeyed  to Jerusalem, spring 1876;  He met James Henry Skene at Aleppo, 1877; travelled among Bedouin, and befriended Shaykh  Faris; sent back Arab horses to Crabbet. Blunt  penetrated al-Najd with his wife,  Pilgrimage to Nejd, The Cradle of the Arab Race, 2 vols. (1881); visited Muhammad Ibn Rashiyd at Hayl; returned by the route of the Hajji from Makkah to Baghdad; departed for India; stayed with Robert Lytton, then Viceroy; Ideas About India (1885), appearing first serially in Fortnightly Review during 1884; preached against the Uthmanliy rule of the Arab regions and proposed returning the Khilafah to the Arabs.

In Egypt, Dec. 1881, he supported the  `Urabiy's revolution; dismayed when the British government instead supported the Khedive against `Urabiy; Blunt purchased Shaykh `Ubayd  outside Cairo; returned to London; after the fall of Tall-al-Kabiyr and the arrest of `Urabiy Pasha. He supported the national party in Egypt, and took a prominent part in the defence of `Urabiy Pasha at personal expense of £5,000, `Urabiy pleading guilty and settling for exile in Ceylon.

In the process Blunt became known as an ardent sympathizer with Muslim aspirations, and in his Future of Islam (1888) he directed attention to the forces which afterwards would produce Pan-Islamism movements in the 20th century.

In 1885 and I886 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a Home Ruler; and in 1887 he was arrested in Ireland while presiding over a political meeting in connexion with the agitation on Lord Clanricarde’s estate, and was imprisoned for two months in Kilmainhani.  Lost action for assault against magistrate at Woodstock; lost election at Deptford; suffered disapproval due to his exposure of Balfour; resumed winter visits to Egypt. There,  he was a violent opponent of the English policy in Egypt and in "The Wind and the Whirlwind" (1883) prophesied its downfall. 

One of his best-known volume of verse, "The Wind and the Whirlwind" (1883), is a revelation of his love to Egypt, and is posted here in segments along with `Urabiy's account of his life and of the events of 1881-1882 Revolution. 

When he died in 1922 he was buried like a Muslim at the Newbuildings Estate, sixteen miles away from Crabbet.