Douglas Hurd

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Douglas Hurd
Hurd's signature under the two-plus-four contract

Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell CH CBE PC (born March 8, 1930 in London ) is a former British diplomat , writer and politician of the Conservative Party who was a member of the House of Commons for 23 years and between 1979 and his resignation in 1995 belonged to the government of Margaret Thatcher and the cabinet under John Major and was a Life Peer member of the House of Lords from 1997 to 2016 under the Life Peerages Act 1958 .

Life

Family, diplomat and writer

Douglas Hurd was a son of Anthony Hurd , who also represented the Conservative Tories as a member of the House of Commons for nineteen years and in 1964 as a life peer with the title Baron Hurd of Westwell , of Westwell in the County of Oxfordshire, under the Life Peerages Act 1958 also became a member of the House of Lords. His grandfather, Percy Hurd, was a member of the House of Commons for 27 years with a brief interruption.

Douglas Hurd himself completed after attending Eton College to study at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge , which he graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts  (BA). He then joined the foreign service as a diplomat in 1952 , to which he was a member until 1966. In addition to this professional activity, he continued his studies at Trinity College, where he obtained a Master of Arts  (MA) in 1957 . He then began his writing work and published his first book, The Arrow War , in 1967 .

Member of the House of Commons and Minister

Hurd, who was honored as Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974, was elected as a candidate for the Conservative Party for the first time as a member of the House of Commons in the general election of February 28, 1974 , where he initially represented the newly created constituency of Mid Oxfordshire and after its dissolution this constituency since the general election of June 9, 1983 until his renouncement of a renewed candidacy in the general election on May 1, 1997 the also newly created constituency Witney .

After the conservative Tories won the general election on May 3, 1979 , Hurd was appointed Minister for Europe by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on May 4, 1979 in her cabinet and held this position until he was replaced by Malcolm Rifkind on May 9 , 1979 . June 1983. In 1982 he was appointed Privy Councilor .

On September 27, 1984 returned Hurd as Minister of Northern Ireland ( Secretary of State for Northern Ireland ) in the cabinet Thatcher back and followed in this role Jim Prior . As part of a cabinet reshuffle, he succeeded Leon Brittan as Home Secretary on September 2, 1985 , while Tom King was his successor as Northern Ireland Minister . He held the office of Minister of the Interior until his replacement by David Waddington on October 26, 1989.

Following Hurd was in a further reshuffle of Prime Minister Thatcher's successor John Major as Foreign Minister ( Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs appointed) in the Cabinet. As such, he participated in the 1990 two-plus-four negotiations . He also retained the office of foreign minister after John Major formed a new cabinet on November 28, 1990 to succeed Thatcher as prime minister . On July 5, 1995, he finally resigned as Secretary of State and was replaced by the previous Secretary of Defense Malcolm Rifkind.

House of Lords

By letters patent dated June 13, 1997, Hurd, who became a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor in 1996 , became a Life Peer with the title Baron Hurd of Westwell, of Westwell in the County of Oxfordshire under the Life Peerages Act 1958 Raised nobility and thus a member of the House of Lords. On June 9, 2016, he retired under the rules of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 and left the House of Lords.

His son Nick Hurd is since 2005 member of the House of Commons since 2010 and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for charities, social enterprises and voluntary work in the Cabinet Office of the Government of Prime Minister David Cameron .

Publications

  • The Arrow War. An Anglo-Chinese Confusion, 1856-1860 . Collins, London 1967
  • Send Him Victorious (with Andrew Osmond). Collins, London 1968
    • Report of the attempt to eliminate the English king . Translation by Helga Wingert-Uhde. Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg / Düsseldorf 1970
  • The Smile on the Face of the Tiger (with Andrew Osmond). Collins, London 1969
  • Scotch on the Rocks (with Andrew Osmond). Collins, London 1971, ISBN 978-0-002-21653-1
  • Truth game . Collins, London 1972, ISBN 978-0-002-21088-1
  • A vote to a kill . Collins, London 1975, ISBN 978-0-002-21691-3
  • An end to promises. Sketch of a Government, 1970-1974 . Collins, London 1979, ISBN 978-0-002-16031-5
  • War without Frontiers (with Andrew Osmond). Hodder & Stoughton, London 1982, ISBN 978-0-340-25140-9
  • Palace of Enchantments (with Stephen Lamport). Hodder & Stoughton, London 1985, ISBN 978-0-340-35100-0
  • The Search for Peace. A Century of Peace Diplomacy . Little, Brown & Co., London 1997, ISBN 978-0-316-64037-4
  • The Shape of Ice . Little, Brown & Co., London 1998, ISBN 978-0-316-64032-9
  • Ten minutes to turn the devil. Collected Short Stories . Little, Brown & Co., London 1999, ISBN 978-0-316-85160-2
  • Image in the water . Little, Brown & Co., London 2001, ISBN 978-0-316-85772-7
  • Memoirs . Little, Brown & Co., London 2003, ISBN 978-0-316-86147-2
  • Robert Peel. A biography . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-753-82384-2
  • Choose your weapons. The British Foreign Secretary: 200 Years of Argument, Successes and Failures . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-297-85334-3
  • Disraeli; or, The Two Lives (with Edward Young). Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-297-86097-6
  • Elizabeth II. The Steadfast . Penguin, London 2015, ISBN 978-0-141-97941-0

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hurd, Douglas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hurd, Douglas Richard, Baron Hurd of Westwell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England , UK