Christopher Soames

Arthur Christopher John Soames, Baron Soames (born October 12, 1920 in Penn , † September 16, 1987 in Odiham ) was a conservative British politician and the son-in-law of Winston Churchill . He sat in the House of Commons for the constituency of Bedford from 1950 to 1960. In 1979/80 he was the last British governor of Southern Rhodesia .

Life

He served in Harold Macmillan's cabinet from 1958 to 1960 as Minister of War and from 1960 to 1968 as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, also under Macmillan's successor Alec Douglas-Home . In 1968 Harold Wilson sent him to France as the British ambassador. At the beginning of his activity there came the Soames affair named after him . On February 4, 1969, he had attended a private dinner with the French President Charles de Gaulle , in which de Gaulle campaigned for a stronger position for Europe vis-à-vis the United States. He sought proximity to Great Britain through stronger bilateral relations and a loose grouping of the states of the European Communities and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), of which Great Britain was a member. After de Gaulle's views became known to the governments of the EC member states and ultimately also to the press, there was diplomatic resentment between Great Britain and France, as the French government declared that Soames had misunderstood de Gaulle's views, while Soames declared that the French side would tell the untruth, since the telegram to the British government was coordinated with France.

In October 1972 Soames was appointed British member of the EC Commission in Brussels by the conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, together with George Thomson . There he took over the external relations of the EC and was also one of the Vice-Presidents of the Commission. He held this office until 1977.

In 1978 he was named Baron Soames of Fletching in the County of East Sussex as a life peer and received a seat and vote in the House of Lords . From 1979 to 1981 he was leader of the conservative majority faction in the House of Lords ( Leader of the House of Lords ) and alongside his duties in Rhodesia Minister in the Margaret Thatcher government .

Soames was the son of Captain Arthur Granville Soames, the descendant of a family of brewers who became landed gentry. His mother was Hope Mary Woodbine Parrish. His parents divorced early, and his mother was a second marriage to the 7th Baron Dynevor . Soames himself married Mary Churchill on February 11, 1947 , the youngest daughter of Winston Churchill, with whom he had five children.

Soames is buried in the grave of the Churchill family in St. Martin Church, Bladon.

Web links

• Time: Festive Birth of a Nation (Zimbabwe)
• Maximilian Genealogy Master Database 2000
• Nicholas Soames - MP for Mid Sussex

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Soames Affair . In: Anthony Teasdale, Timothy Bainbridge: The Penguin Companion to European Union