The Lord Sudeley | |
|---|---|
 Baron Sudeley in 1987 | |
| Member of theHouse of Lords | |
| Hereditary peer 17 June 1960 – 11 November 1999 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1939-06-17)17 June 1939 |
| Died | 5 September 2022(2022-09-05) (aged 83) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Parent(s) | Michael Hanbury-Tracy (father) Colline Amabel St Hill (mother) |
| Alma mater | Worcester College, OxfordUniversity of Oxford |
| Occupation | Politician, author, activist |
Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley,FSA (17 June 1939 – 5 September 2022) was aBritish hereditary peer, author, andmonarchist.[1] In 1941, at the age of two, he succeeded hisfirst cousin once removed, Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 6th Baron Sudeley, to theBarony of Sudeley and until the reforms ofHouse of Lords Act 1999, he regularly sat as ahereditary peer.
Hanbury-Tracy's reputation was severely damaged in later life by racist comments he made in reports and speeches, alongside comments he made praising theNazi leader,Adolf Hitler.[2] A member of theConservative Party all his adult life, he was also sometimes President and Chairman of theConservative Monday Club for seventeen years. He was Vice-Chancellor of theInternational Monarchist League,[3] and President of theTraditional Britain Group until death.[4]
Merlin Hanbury-Tracy was born on 17 June 1939 to Captain Michael Hanbury-Tracy, aScots Guards officer, who died from wounds received atDunkirk, and Colline Annabel, only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill, theRoyal North Devon Hussars, commander of the 2/5 battalion ofSherwood Foresters, who was also killed by a sniper atVillers-Plouich, France, on 8 July 1917.[5]
Hanbury-Tracy's parents sent him toEton College, one of England's premier public schools. He later graduated in history fromWorcester College, Oxford. Hanbury-Tracy was also sometimes an adjunct lecturer at theUniversity of Bristol.[6] He served hisNational Service obligations in the ranks of the Scots Guards.
Lord Sudeley was a member of theHouse of Lords for 39 years. He inherited his peerage aged 2, and finally took his seat in the House at the age of 21. He was a regular attender and introduced several measures, most notably the Bill to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts and, in 1981, a Bill to uphold theBook of Common Prayer.
Sudeley was one of the unelectedhereditary peers expelled from the Upper House by theHouse of Lords Act 1999. Faced with losing his hereditary position, Sudeley opposed reforms to the House of Lords. Sudeley believed that the House of Lords should be left unreformed, declaring that "If it isn't broken why mend it?" He also said that since he believed inherited titles were "inextricably" tied to the monarchy that it was "odd that they just want to touch one institution and not the other". He also claimed that the House of Lords had developed a "wealth of experience". In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the reactionaryInternational Monarchist League.[7]
From the early 1970s, Sudeley was active in theConservative Monday Club of which he became president in February 1991.[8] He wrote for them a leading essay on "The Role of Heredity in Politics",[9] produced a Club Policy Paper againstLords Reform in December 1979, and in 1991 they published his booklet titled, and arguing for,The Preservation of the House of Lords, with a foreword by parliamentarianJohn Stokes.
Sudelely's reputation was possibly affected by racist comments he made in speeches and reports. On 2 June 2006,The Times quoted him as stating, in a report of the Monday Club's Annual General Meeting, that "Hitler did well to get everyone back to work". It also reported him saying that "True though the fact may be that some races are superior to others", going on to suggest that such rhetoric might interfere with the Monday Club's hopes of being accepted again inConservative Party circles.[2]
In September 2001, theConservative Party leadership candidateIain Duncan Smith said the Monday Club was a "viable organisation… in a sense what the party is about".[10] However, six weeks later, after becoming leader, he publicly distanced the party from the Monday Club until it ceased to "promulgate or discuss policies relating to race";[11] he also indicated that no Conservative MPs should contribute toRight Now!, a quarterly magazine of which Lord Sudeley was a Patron, after an article in it describedNelson Mandela as a "terrorist".[10]
Lord Sudeley was also a vice-president of the now-defunct Western Goals Institute.[12][13][14]
Lord Sudeley was also Patron of the Bankruptcy Association (Lloyds Bank foreclosed uponCharles Hanbury-Tracy, 4th Baron Sudeley in 1893, when his debt was covered twice over by large assets) and Convenor of the Forum for Stable Currencies. He was also Lay Patron of the Prayer Book Society and a past President of thePowysland Club.
Lord Sudeley once described inWho's Who one of his hobbies as "Ancestor Worship", with "Conversation" being listed inDebrett's. He took great pride in the former family seat ofToddington Manor inGloucestershire which the family was later forced to sell.[15] In its successful blend of the Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque styles, Toddington is the fore-runner of theHouses of Parliament when the soon-to-be 1st Lord Sudeley was selected as chairman of the new parliamentary committee to settle upon the design. His contributions based upon Toddington's were accepted and enhanced.[16]
At Easter 1985, in conjunction with the century-oldManorial Society of Great Britain (of which he sat on the Governing Council), Sudeley held a conference at his old home, the proceedings published in a volume entitledThe Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, taking the history of his family back toThomas Becket's murder and ultimately toCharlemagne. On 21 November 2006, he arranged a further conference at theSociety of Antiquaries of London on "Visual Aspects of Toddington in the 19th century".[17]
Lord Sudeley has written many published essays, including a history of the English gentleman for a German pharmaceutical magazine,Die Waage. He also wrote a history of the House of Lords in which he promoted itsTory (as opposed toWhig history) interpretation, entitledPeers Through the Mist of Time.[18] A launch for his book took place at the Brooks's Club in London on 28 September 2018. In his 2021 bookToddington, the Unforgotten Forerunner, Sudeley tells the story of his family's former seat, designed in a blend of Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque by Charles Hanbury-Tracy, later Chairman of the Commission for the Rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament in the same style, and its tragic and unexplained loss.[19] He is also the author of a satire on Greek mythology (published inJohn Pudney's famousPick of Today's Short Stories) and a quantity of politically incorrect short stories mostly published in theLondon Miscellany magazine.[20] In his later years Sudeley style-edited a definitive monograph onAzerbaijan's architecture, translated from the Russian.[citation needed]
Lord Sudeley lived in a mansion flat in Dorset Square, London. He had been married three times and divorced twice.[21]
Sudeley married his first wife on 18 January 1980 (dissolved 1988), Elizabeth Mairi Villiers[22] (3 November 1941 – 29 September 2014),[23] daughter of Derek William Charles Keppel, Viscount Bury (heir-apparent of the 9thEarl of Albemarle) andLady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart (youngest daughter of the7th Marquess of Londonderry,[24] and ex-wife of Alastair Michael Hyde Villiers, a Partner in Panmure Gordon & Company, stockbrokers.
Sudeley was married secondly in 1999 (dissolved 2006) to Margarita (born 1962) daughter of Nikolai Danko, and ex-wife ofLloyd's broker Nigel Kellett.
Sudeley married a third time, in 2010, Dr Tatiana Dudina (born 19 August 1950), daughter of Russian Colonel Boris Dudin and Galina Veselovskaya. Dr Dudina holds adoctorate inphilology from Moscow State Linguistic University.[23]
Lord Sudeley died on 5 September 2022, at the age of 83.[25][26] He was succeeded in the Barony of Sudeley by his third cousin once removed, Nicholas Hanbury-Tracy.
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Just six weeks ago, before his election, Mr Duncan Smith described the Monday Club as a "viable organisation with the party and they are, in a sense what the party is about". However, in a swift about-turn, three Conservative MPs, Andrew Hunter, Andrew Rosindell and Angela Watkins, were earlier this month instructed by the new leadership to sever their links with the Monday Club. Mr Hunter had been its deputy chairman and associate editor of its Right Now! magazine, which described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist".
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Chairman of theMonday Club May 1993 – December 2007 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Baron Sudeley 1941–2022 | Succeeded by |
