John de Salis, 9th Count de Salis-Soglio  John Bernard Philip Humbert de Salis, 9th Count de Salis-Soglio, TD, "John da Buri", Graf v. Salis-Soglio, (London, 16 November 1947-Cà Buri, Mezzane di Sotto, Veneto, Italy 14 March 2014); SRI Comes, "Illustris et Magnificus"; former ICRC delegate and envoy; Knight Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion (2000) of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (knight, 1974), and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Order of Malta with Swords, first ambassador of the Order to Thailand 1986-98, Cambodia 1993-98, president of its Swiss Association (1995-2000) and of CIOMAL (Comité International de l'Ordre de Malte), 2000–08; British soldier and lawyer; Valpolicella vigneron and hereditary Knight of the Golden Spur. A Count of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichsgraf), (created by letters patent dated Vienna, 12 March 1748 for Envoy Peter de Salis-Soglio (1675-1749), of Chur and Chiavenna, and his son Jerome (Naturalized British in 1731), by Emperor Francis I), John de Salis was the only child of Lt. Colonel John Eugène, 8th Count de Salis (1891-1949), Irish Guards, by his Roman wife Maria Camilla (1926-1953), daughter of General Umberto Presti di Camarda by Teresa (d.1993), daughter of Filippo Nereo Vignola, of Mezzane and Verona. The grandson of the British diplomat, Irish landowner and Catholic re-convert Sir John Francis Charles, 7th Count de Salis-Soglio, his earliest years were spent at 10 Priory Walk, Kensington, and 26 Roedean Crescent, Roehampton Gate, SW15. His father died when he was under two and his mother when he was five, his step-father when he was 10 and one of his two paternal uncles when he was four. His paternal grandparents had also died, in 1902 and 1939, so he was subsequently brought-up, inter-alia, by Franco-Belgian cousins in France (the widow and family of the 3rd Duc de Magenta at Sully, in particular), his remaining paternal uncle in Wiltshire, and his Veronese maternal grandmother, Teresa Vignola Presti.