Iain Sproat

Iain MacDonald Sproat (born November 8, 1938 in Dollar , Clackmannanshire , Scotland , † September 29, 2011 ) was a journalist , editor and British politician of the Conservative Party .

Life

Sproat studied after attending St Mary's School in Melrose , whose headmaster was his father, and Winchester, first at the University of Aix-en-Provence and then English at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford . He then became associate editor at the Time & Tide publishing house and shortly thereafter applied in a by-election in June 1964 in the Rutherglen constituency for a seat in the House of Commons , but clearly defeated the Labor Party candidate . He then became an editor at the weekly newspaper The Sunday Telegraph , before he was then head of special projects at BPS Publishing.

He was elected as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the general election of June 18, 1970 for the first time as a member of the House of Commons and represented in this until his electoral defeat on June 9, 1983, the constituency of Aberdeen South . During this time he also became chairman of the Conservative Party's parliamentary group for the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1975 . After his party's victory in the 1979 general election, he became chairman of the group of MPs from Scotland for his party and, in September 1981, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Commerce for Aviation, Shipping and Tourism.

After he left the House of Commons in 1983, subsequent candidacies were unsuccessful, so that he was first adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then to the private bank Rothschild .

In the elections of April 9, 1992 , he was re-elected as a member of the House of Commons and this time represented the interests of the Harwich constituency until May 1, 1997 . Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister John Major appointed him Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for National Heritage and then, following a cabinet reshuffle, in 1995, Minister of State and Minister of Sport. In the general election of May 1, 1997 , he lost this conservative constituency as the first constituency holder of his party.

Sproat also worked as a publisher. He is best known for his series The Cricketers' Who's Who, published since 1987, about England's most famous cricket players. The first five volumes of a 15-volume English translation he published of the works of Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin won the main prize at the 1999 Moscow Book Fair . He was also temporarily Chairman of the British European Cultural Federation and Chairman of the Board of Oxford University Press .

Publications

• The Cricketers' Who's Who , 1987, ISBN 978-0-00-218262-1
• Wodehouse at war , 1981, ISBN 0-907681-00-X
• The picture life of Edward Heath , 1971, ISBN 0-85166-432-6

Web links

• Iain Sproat at Hansard (English)
• Publications (openlibrary.org)
• THE TELEGRAPH: Politics Obituaries: Iain Sproat (October 7, 2011)