John Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham

John Edward Poynder Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham (born April 15, 1924 in London , † December 31, 2001 there ) was a British author , historian and politician ( Conservative Party ). He was editor of the political magazine National Review and wrote several biographies (including on David Lloyd George ). Grigg was one of the first to renounce her title of nobility after the 1963 Peerage Act came into force .

biography

Early years

His father Edward Grigg was a journalist for The Times , a Conservative MP, Governor of Kenya and a member of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet . His mother, Joan Dickson-Poynder, was the daughter of Lord Islington . John Grigg attended Eton College and then joined the Grenadier Guards . During the Second World War he was an officer of the guard at St James's Palace and Windsor Castle ; in France and Belgium he took part in combat operations against the Germans. After the war he studied modern history at New College of Oxford University . He earned a reputation as an excellent academic and received the University Gladstone Memorial Prize in 1948 . After graduating from college, Grigg began working for National Review magazine , owned and edited by his father. As the father's health deteriorated, his son took over most of the operational and publishing tasks. From 1954 he was the sole editor of the magazine, which has since been renamed National and English Review .

Journalist and politician

Grigg belonged to the liberal wing of the Conservative Party and was seeking a seat in the House of Commons . He ran in the 1951 general election in the Oldham West constituency, but was defeated by incumbent Leslie Hale . In the general election in 1955 , he tried again in the same constituency, but lost again to Hale. With the death of his father in 1955, Grigg inherited the title of nobility Baron Altrincham , which he had been awarded in 1945. A seat in the House of Lords was associated with the title , which precluded further candidacies for the House of Commons. However, he did not apply for a Writ of Summons , which he denied his right to take the seat in the House of Lords.

As editor of the National and English Review , Grigg was able to express his views more freely after his father's death. In 1956 he attacked the Conservative government for their actions in the Suez Crisis and demanded the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Egypt . He advocated reform of the House of Lords, but suggested that abolishing the House of Lords might be the only alternative. Griggs caused the greatest controversy when he wrote in an editorial in August 1957 that the court of Queen Elizabeth II was too indebted to the traditions of the upper class and too British. He advocated a "classless" and more Commonwealth-oriented court. He strongly criticized the Queen's speaking style: “Like her mother, she seems incapable of being able to string several sentences together without a written text ... The personality conveyed by the utterances put in her mouth is that of a smug schoolgirl, a captain the hockey team, a class representative and a recent candidate for confirmation. "

Grigg's article caused a stir and was criticized by the majority of the press; a minority, including the New Statesman and the Spectator , shared some of his views. Henry Fairlie of the Daily Mail attacked Grigg for daring "to set his infinitely small and transitory mind against the accumulated experience of centuries". Geoffrey Fisher , the Archbishop of Canterbury , shared this opinion. When Grigg left Television House after an ITN television interview on the subject , a member of the League of Empire Loyalists slapped him in the face. In 1960, the National and English Review suspended its publication due to financial difficulties. Grigg then worked for the Guardian as a columnist for ten years . When Tony Benn (then Viscount Stansgate) succeeded in enforcing the Peerage Act 1963 in Parliament, on July 31, 1963, Grigg was the second person after Benn to renounce the title of nobility for life under the new law. In the following years Grigg ran several times, but did not succeed in being elected to the House of Commons. In 1982 he resigned from the Conservative Party and switched to the Social Democratic Party . From 1986 to 1993 he was a columnist for The Times , occasionally writing for the Observer.

Author and historian

In the late 1960s, Grigg began a project that would keep him busy for the rest of his life; a multi-volume biography of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George . The first volume, entitled The Young Lloyd George , was published in 1973. The second volume, Lloyd George: The People's Champion , which covered the years 1902 to 1911, followed in 1978; Grigg received the Whitbread Book Award for this . The third volume, Lloyd George: From Peace to War , published in 1985 (covering the years 1912 to 1916) was awarded the Wolfson History Prize . By the time Grigg died in late 2001, he had almost completed volume four, Lloyd George: War Leader (covering the years 1916 to 1918). The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan added the final chapter and the book was published in 2002. In all volumes showed Grigg a remarkable sympathy and even kinship with the "Welsh Wizard" (Welsh Wizard) , though her personality was very different. The historian Robert Blake described the result as "a fascinating story told by a great biographer with expressiveness, verve, clarity and impartiality".

Grigg wrote various other books. This included a biography of Nancy Astor and the sixth volume of the official Times story . In the book 1943: The Victory that Never Was , published in 1980 , he argued that the Western Allies could have started the invasion of Europe as early as 1943, which would have shortened the war by a year.

Works

• Is the Monarchy Perfect? (1958)
• Lloyd George: The Young Lloyd George (1973)
• Lloyd George: The People's Champion (1978)
• Nancy Astor: A Lady Unashamed (1980)
• 1943: The Victory That Never Was (1980)
• Lloyd George: From Peace to War (1985)
• The History of The Times: The Thomson Years (1993)
• Lloyd George: War Leader (2002)

Marriage and offspring

On December 3, 1958, he married Marian Patricia Campbell. The couple adopted two children, Alexander Henry Campbell Grigg (* 1966) and Edward William Jonathan Grigg (* 1969). When he renounced his title in 1963, his baron title was suspended and when he died it was revived in favor of the title heir. Since only biological sons can inherit his title of nobility, the title fell to Grigg's brother Anthony (* 1934) as 3rd Baron Altrincham in 2001. The right to a seat in the House of Lords associated with the title had since been abolished with the House of Lords Act 1999 .

reception

Grigg, as Baron Altrincham, is played in the Netflix series The Crown by John Heffernan .

Web links

• Obituary , The Guardian , Jan. 2, 2002
• John Edward Poynder Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham on thepeerage.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ UK General Election results October 1951. politicsresources.net, October 22, 2012, accessed October 10, 2013 . 
2. ↑ UK General Election results May 1955. (No longer available online.) Politicsresources.net, October 22, 2012, archived from the original on December 11, 2013 ; accessed on October 10, 2013 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ John Grigg. The Daily Telegraph , January 2, 2002, accessed October 10, 2013 . 
4. ^ Gyles Brandreth: Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage . Century, London 2004, ISBN 0-7126-6103-4 , pp. 374 .
5. ↑ Ben Pimlott : The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy . HarperCollins, London 2001, ISBN 0-00-255494-1 , pp. 281 .
6. ^ Robert Blake in Evening Standard , October 28, 2002.
7. ↑ Ed Power: The Crown, season 2, episode 5 review: the 'priggish' Queen comes under media attack . In: The Telegraph . December 9, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2017.

predecessor	Office	successor
Edward Grigg	Baron Altrincham 1955-1963	Title waiver (from 2001: Anthony Grigg )