Harold Brooks-Baker

Harold Brooks-Baker, genealogist, journalist and publisher, who has died aged 71, carved out a career peering into the nooks and crannies of the British aristocracy, but also provided lineage lines for families all over the world. American-born, he regarded the modern pursuit of equality in the country of his adoption as a form of national self flagellation.

As managing director of Debrett's Peerage and then as publishing director of Burke's Peerage, he viewed royalty and the gentry as an endangered species. But as an unashamed self-publicist, he was a purveyor of instant comment on all matters royal, prompting the Queen's press secretary to issue a statement to the effect that Mr Brooks-Baker spoke without authority or knowledge.

When, in August 1996, Diana, Princess of Wales, leaked to the press that she was to receive a £15m divorce settlement, Brooks-Baker remarked: "Jackie Onassis would have laughed. She could have spent that before breakfast."

Brooks-Baker was the son of a Washington lawyer. As a child he contracted polio, which affected him throughout his life. He was educated at private schools on America's east coast and attended Harvard Law School. In 1956 he worked for Harold Stassen, the Minnesota politician who ran the campaign of Christian Herter, Richard Nixon's rival for the Republican vice-presidential nomination.

Brooks-Baker went on to spend some time as a press officer at the White House, and then joined the Washington Post, as a reporter. As a foreign correspondent for the Washington Observer he travelled extensively, fostering contacts with exiled royalty in Europe. In 1964 he married Countess Irene Marie du Luart de Montsaulin, a member of a Maine family, descended from French nobility. They divorced and in 1997 he married Catherine Neville-Rolfe.

After his first marriage he joined an American securities management company, working in bond dealing in Paris and Geneva. He arrived on the London business scene in the mid 1970s when he was appointed managing director of Debrett's.

But in 1981 the firm was acquired by Ian McCorquodale, the son of the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland. Brooks-Baker left, winning a compensation claim for an undisclosed sum from an industrial tribunal.

Soon afterwards he joined Burke's, publishing guides to etiquette and protocol, as well as history books. Another side of the business was genealogical research, which Brooks-Baker expanded, and which provided the company with a steady income.

During his tenure at Debrett's and Burke's, Brooks-Baker acquired a reputation as a super snob, an appellation that secretly delighted him.

He never fully recovered from a fall last autumn.

· Harold Brooks-Baker, genealogist and publisher, born November 6 1933; died March 5 2005

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