 He succeeded to the title of 2nd Baron Faringdon, and inherited the estate of Buscot Park from his grandfather Alexander Henderson, 1st Baron Faringdon in 1934.In early life he had been prominent among the bright young things, but by the late 1930s had joined the Labour Party, and was a keen supporter of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, after serving in a field hospital in Aragon in 1936.In 1938 he gave a home to 40 child evacuees from Spain, as well as to several other notable exiles, at his Oxfordshire estate.