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Godfrey Rathbone Benson, Ist Baron Charnwood alias Lord Charnwood (6 November 1864 - 3 February 1945) was an British author, academic, Liberal politician and philanthropist. Benson was born in Alresford, Hampshire, the son of William Benson, a barrister, and Elizabeth Soulsby Smith. He was educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated in 1887, and would later become a philosophy lecturer at Balliol. He was involved in politics and represented Woodstock in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1895 and served as Mayor of Lichfield between 1909 and 1911. The latter year Benson was raised to the peerage as Baron Charnwood, of Castle Donington in the Country of Leicester. Lord Charnwood was the author many works. These include Abraham Lincoln, which he published in 1916 as an accurate biography, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1923, another historical biography. He was also involved in charitable work with the deaf and disabled. Lord Charnwood married Dorothea Mary Roby Thorpe, daughter of Roby Thorpe, in 1897. She died in 1942. Charnwood died in London in Februrary 1945, aged 80, and was succeeded in the barony by his second but only surviving son John.