The Right Honourable The Lord Waldegrave of North Hill PC
Official portrait, 2020
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
In office 5 July 1995 – 2 May 1997
Prime Minister	John Major
Chancellor	Kenneth Clarke
Preceded by	Jonathan Aitken
Succeeded by	Alistair Darling
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
In office 20 July 1994 – 5 July 1995
Prime Minister	John Major
Preceded by	Gillian Shephard
Succeeded by	Douglas Hogg
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 10 April 1992 – 20 July 1994
Prime Minister	John Major
Preceded by	Chris Patten
Succeeded by	David Hunt
Secretary of State for Health
In office 2 November 1990 – 10 April 1992
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher John Major
Preceded by	Kenneth Clarke
Succeeded by	Virginia Bottomley
Junior ministerial offices 1981–1990 Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs In office 26 July 1988 – 2 November 1990 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Geoffrey Howe John Major Douglas Hurd Preceded by David Mellor Succeeded by Douglas Hogg Minister of State for Housing and Planning In office 13 June 1987 – 26 July 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Nicholas Ridley Preceded by John Patten Succeeded by The Earl of Caithness Minister of State for Environment, Countryside and Planning In office 10 September 1986 – 12 June 1987 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Nicholas Ridley Preceded by The Lord Elton Succeeded by The Lord Belstead Minister of State for Local Government In office 2 September 1985 – 9 September 1986 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Kenneth Baker Nicholas Ridley Preceded by Kenneth Baker Succeeded by Rhodes Boyson Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment In office 13 June 1983 – 2 September 1985 Serving with Sir George Young (1983–1985) The Earl of Avon (1983–1985) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Patrick Jenkin Preceded by Giles Shaw Succeeded by Angela Rumbold Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science In office 15 September 1981 – 13 June 1983 Serving with Rhodes Boyson (1981–1983) William Shelton (1981–1983) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Sec. of State Mark Carlisle Sir Keith Joseph Preceded by Neil Macfarlane Succeeded by Peter Brooke ·Bob Dunn
Parliamentary offices Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal Life peerage 28 July 1999 Member of Parliament forBristol West In office 3 May 1979 – 8 April 1997 Preceded by Robert Cooke Succeeded by Valerie Davey
Personal details
Born	William Arthur Waldegrave (1946-08-15)15 August 1946 (age 79) London, England
Party	Conservative
Spouse	Caroline Burrows ​ (m. 1975)​
Children	4
Parent(s)	The 12th Earl Waldegrave Mary Hermione Grenfell
Relatives	The 13th Earl Waldegrave (brother) Lady Hussey of North Bradley (sister)
Education	Eton College
Alma mater	University of Oxford Harvard University

William Arthur Waldegrave,Baron Waldegrave of North HillPC (/ˈwɔːlɡreɪv/; born 15 August 1946) is a BritishConservative Party politician who served as aCabinet minister from 1990 until 1997, and is a life member of theTory Reform Group. Since 1999, he has been alife peer in theHouse of Lords. Lord Waldegrave wasprovost ofEton College from 2009 to 2024. Additionally, he waschancellor of theUniversity of Reading from 2016 to 2022.^[1][2]

Waldegrave's 2015 memoir,A Different Kind of Weather, discusses his high youthful political ambition, his political and to some extent personal life, and growing acceptance that he would not achieve his ultimate ambition. It also provides an account of theHeath,Thatcher and—to a lesser extent—Major governments, including his role in the development of thepoll tax or Community Charge. It includes a chapter entitled 'The Poll Tax – all my own work'.^[3]

Waldegrave served as a trustee (1992–2011) and chair (2002–2011) of theRhodes Trust, during which time he also helped to create and served as a trustee of theMandela Rhodes Foundation. His portrait hangs atRhodes House, Oxford.^[4]

He was the chairman of trustees of theNational Museum of Science and Industry from 2002 to 2010.^[5]

Bearing the titleThe Honourable from birth as a younger son of an Earl, Waldegrave was the youngest (by six years) of the seven children ofGeoffrey Waldegrave, 12th Earl Waldegrave, and his wife Mary Hermione Grenfell. His elder brother isthe present Earl. His father's title was created five generations earlier for the diplomat and ambassadorJames Waldegrave, 1st Earl Waldegrave, whose grandfather wasJames II and VII.

Waldegrave is the nephew of the courtierDame Frances Campbell-Preston and one of his sisters isLady Susan Hussey, who served as a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth II and is a Lady of the Household under King Charles III, and who became Baroness Hussey of North Bradley uponher husband's elevation to theHouse of Lords in 1996.

Waldegrave was privately educated atEton College, where he won theNewcastle Scholarship in 1965. He then studied at theUniversity of Oxford where he was an undergraduate student ofCorpus Christi College. During his study, he served for a term as president of theOxford Union and theOxford University Conservative Association.^[6] Oxford was followed byHarvard University in the United States, on aKennedy Scholarship. In 1971, he was elected a Prize Fellow ofAll Souls College, Oxford, and subsequently, in 2001, he was appointed a DistinguishedFellow in recognition of his significant contributions in the sphere of politics and international relations.

In 1971, Waldegrave was working at theConservative Research Department; that March he was appointed to theCentral Policy Review Staff (CPRS, also referred to as the 'Think-Tank'). "He was from the beginning one of the most active 'philosophers' of the CPRS, and the proponent of strong views about its proper roles and functions".^[7] He was one of the few openly political members of the staff and was used byVictor Rothschild, head of the CPRS, as a link with both the Conservative party (then in government) and the outside, non-Civil Service world.^[8] He left in December 1973.^[9]

He was elected to theHouse of Commons asMember of Parliament (MP) forBristol West in 1979. He was regarded as a member of the "wet" or moderate tendency of the Conservative Party, and despite this progressed well from the backbenches inMargaret Thatcher's government.

He became aParliamentary under-secretary of state at theDepartment of Education and Science in 1981 before moving to theDepartment of the Environment in 1983. He remained at Environment, becoming aMinister of State in 1985, until he became a Minister of State at theForeign and Commonwealth Office in 1988. In this post he was involved in setting policy on arms exports to Iraq; the initial draft of theScott Report found that he had agreed in February 1989 to relax the policy, but had sent out 38 untrue letters to Members of Parliament stating that the policy was unchanged. However,Sir Richard Scott exonerated Waldegrave of "duplicitous intent" in wrongly describing the Government's policy.^[10]

He was promoted to the Cabinet asSecretary of State for Health in November 1990, just days before Thatcher's resignation, and remained a member of the Cabinet throughoutJohn Major's time asprime minister. He becameChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in theCabinet Office with responsibility for public services and science in 1992,Secretary of State of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1994 andChief Secretary to the Treasury in 1995.

After losing his Commons seat toValerie Davey in the1997 general election, he entered theHouse of Lords being created alife peer asBaron Waldegrave of North Hill,ofChewton Mendip in theCounty of Somerset, on 28 July 1999.^[11]

Waldegrave was a director of Adam & Company, a member of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, from 2017 to 2018. He has been a director ofCoutts & Company, also a member of theRoyal Bank of Scotland Group, since 2012. He is currently^[when?] non-executive director ofGW Pharmaceuticals, which is involved in thecannabis business.^[12][13]

He is married toCaroline Burrows, cookery writer and managing director ofLeith's School of Food and Wine. They have four children, Katherine, Elizabeth, James and Harriet.^{[citation needed]}

Waldegrave is a trustee ofCumberland Lodge, an educational charity.^[14] He is an active member of the board of managers for theLewis Walpole Library,Yale University.^[15]

Waldegrave attendedBilderberg Group meetings four times: 1987, 1988, 1990 and 1995.^{[citation needed]}

In 1993, when he was the British science minister Waldegrave offered a prize for the best lay explanation of theHiggs boson. He had observed that British taxpayers were paying a lot of money (in contributions toCERN) for something very few of them understood, and he challenged UK particle physicists to explain, in a simple manner on one piece of paper, 'What is the Higgs Boson, and why do we want to find it?'^[16]

Professor David Miller's metaphor, which he entitled "A quasi-political explanation of the Higgs boson", is probably the most quoted explanation of the Higgs boson and won the prize:^[16][17]

• Miller asked his listeners to imagine a room full of Conservative party workers quietly talking to one another. This represents the Higgs field in space.
• A former Conservative Prime Minister enters the room. All the workers she passes are strongly attracted to her. As she moves through the room, the cluster of admirers around her create resistance to her movement, and she becomes 'heavier'. This can be imagined as how a particle moves through the Higgs field. The field clusters around a particle, resisting its motion and giving it mass.
• If a sleazy rumour crosses the room, it creates the same sort of clustering. The workers gather together to hear the details, the cluster can move across the room as the workers pass on the details to their neighbours. This cluster is the Higgs particle or Higgs Boson.^{[citation needed]}

• Waldegrave, William:A Different Kind of Weather – A Memoir, Constable (2015);ISBN 978-1-47211-975-9

Coat of arms of William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill

Notes The shield and crest are the same as those of theEarl Waldegrave. Crest Out of a ducal coronet Or a plume of five ostrich feathers the first two Argent the third per pale Argent and Gules the last two Gules Escutcheon Per pale Argent and Gules Supporters On either side a talbot reguardant Sable eased Or gorged with a mural crown Argent and holding in the mouth a columbine Gules slipped Or Motto Coelum Non Animum (Always The Same Person)[18]

• Hansard 1803–2005:contributions in Parliament by William Waldegrave
• Announcement of his introduction at the House of Lords House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 19 October 1999
• First interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 12 and 13 June 2011 (video)
• Second interview 28 June 2013 (video)

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