Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, KT, PC (2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was a British Conservative politician. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964. He was the last prime minister to hold office while a member of the House of Lords. His premiership was the second briefest of the twentieth century, lasting two days short of a year.
About Alec Douglas-Home in brief
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, KT, PC (2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was a British Conservative politician. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964. He was the last prime minister to hold office while a member of the House of Lords, before disclaiming his peerage and taking up a seat in the Commons. His premiership was the second briefest of the twentieth century, lasting two days short of a year. He later served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Edward Heath at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. After the first of the twin Conservative defeats of 1974, he stood down at the second, the October 1974 election, and returned to the Lords as a life peer. He gradually retired from front-line politics and died in 1995, aged 92. His son, the 12th Earl of Home, succeeded in the courtesy title of Lord Dunglass, and the younger son, Sir Alec Douglas- home, became the 14th Earl. Douglas-home was educated at Ludgrove School, Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. A talented cricketer, he played first-class cricket at club and county level; he began serving in the Territorial Army from 1924. He entered Parliament in 1931 and served as Neville Chamberlain’s parliamentary aide, although his diagnosis in 1940 with spinal tuberculosis would immobilise him for two years. He regained his seat in 1950, but left the Commons the following year when, on the death of his father, he entered the Lords.
In the latter post he supported United States resolve in the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the UK signatory of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August 1963. The manner of his appointment was controversial, and two Macmillan Cabinet ministers refused to stay in office under him. The Conservative Party, having governed for nearly twelve years, lost their standing after the scandalous Profumo affair under MacMillan and seemed headed for heavy electoral defeat. In July 1965, he resigned the party leadership, having instituted a new and less secretive method for electing the leader. He would later become the 18th century’s most famous Etonian, Cyril Connolly, who described him as “a sleepy boy who is showered with favours and crowned with all the laurels, who is liked by the masters and admired by the boys” He died in October 1995, at the age of 92, and was survived by his wife, the Lady Lilian Lambton, and his son, Sir Alec Douglas Home, a barrister and former head of the London School of Economics. He is buried in Kensal Rise, London, with his wife’s former husband, the former Prime Minister, Sir David Blunkett, and their two daughters, Margaret and Julian. He had a son, Alec, and a daughter, Sophie, who was married to the late Baroness Home.
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