UK Cigar Scene Magazine January Issue 13 | Page 19

Lonsdale Cigars The Cuban Rafael Gonzales brand created the Lonsdale cigar size, for Hugh Cecil Lowther, the Fifth Earl of Lonsdale. The Rafael González brand was created in the 1930’s originally with the name “La Flor de Márquez”. Vitola de Galera: Cervantes Length: 165 mm (6 ½ ") Ring Gauge: 42 (16.67 mm) It was in this brand that the 6 ½” (165mm) by 42 gauge cigar, which has Vitola de Galera (or factory name) of Cervantes, was first called a Lonsdale after Hugh Lowther, the 5th Earl of Lonsdale, the sporting Earl and cigar aficionado. Min Ron Nee reports that a picture of Lord Lonsdale can be found on most boxes produced before the mid 1980’s. Many other brands also now use the name as well for this vitola. About Robert Jarman Robert Jarman was a part-owner and Managing Director of Debrett’s Peerage Ltd, which he acquired in 1976, and transformed from a single title business (the Peerage & Baronetage), into an international publishing house, with subsidiaries in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Robert Jarman was also the originator of ‘Debrett’s People of Today’, which is now the UK’s most important contemporary biographical reference book, listing the top 25,000 most successful and influential people in the UK. Robert also launched and was Editor in Chief of ‘Debrett’s Magazine’, a controlled circulation magazine, sent exclusively to the 36,000 listed in ‘Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage’, and covering subjects of interest to them. Robert Jarman sold Debrett in 1988, and created The Vintage Magazine which he edits, because it has enabled him to contact many old friends and associates, authors and journalists. He says it has “an editorial ‘style’, which will is ‘informed’, amusing, and slightly irreverent, but never malicious or inaccurate.” To Subscribe to The Vintage Magazine follow this link: www.thevintagemagazine.com/subscriber-information 18