Peter Smithers

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Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway Smithers (* 9. December 1913 in Yorkshire , England , † 8. June 2006 in Vico Morcote , Ticino , Switzerland ) was a British intelligence -Offizier, politicians of the Conservative Party and botanist , who for 14 years deputy of the House of Commons and Secretary General of the Council of Europe between 1964 and 1969 . As a botanist, Smithers, who is considered one of the models for the novel and film character James Bond , invented by his comrade-in-arms Ian Fleming , created a plant collection of international importance after his retirement.

Life

Studies and intelligence officer in World War II

Smithers, son of Lt. Col. HO Smithers, began after visiting the Harrow School with partial support of a scholarship to study in History of Modern Times and the Law at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford . Although he was admitted to the bar ( Inns of Court ) of Inner Temple as a barrister in 1936 , he resumed postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford and eventually earned a PhD for a thesis on the Life of Joseph Addison , an English poet, politician and journalist from the early Enlightenment period .

In 1939 Smithers joined the Royal Navy Reserve . During the Second World War he was employed as an intelligence officer, first in Paris and after the occupation of Paris by the German Wehrmacht and the escape of the French government in Bordeaux . Shortly before the Armistice of Compiègne on June 22, 1940 , he was recalled from Bordeaux and was subsequently employed as a deputy naval attaché at the embassy in the USA . There he dealt with the analysis and transmission of messages from the Imperial Japanese Navy to the British authorities that had been deciphered by the US Navy Intelligence Service ONI ( Office of Naval Intelligence ) . He also dealt with the unmasking of the refueling points of the German submarines and undertook exploratory visits to Mexico and Panama . Smithers, who was most recently promoted to Lieutenant Commander , is said to be one of the role models for the novel and film character James Bond , invented by his comrade-in-arms Ian Fleming .

After the war he was first employees at Henry Berry & Co , a family business in the field of hydraulic engineering , as well as the technology publisher Butterworth & Co .

Member of the House of Commons and Junior Minister

After serving on the Winchester City Council for some time , Smithers was elected as a Conservative Party candidate with 31,462 votes (56.77 percent) for the first time in the House of Commons elections on February 23, 1950 , and represented the House of Commons until his resignation on March 9, 1964 the constituency of Winchester . He was able to assert himself against the candidate of the Labor Party , LF Cornillie, after George Jeger , the previous constituency holder of the Labor Party, no longer ran there, but in the Goole constituency .

Because of his intelligence experience as the weekly newspaper was of the press The Economist expected to a junior ministerial posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( Foreign ) would get, but that by then- Prime Minister Winston Churchill was ignored. Instead, he became 1952 Parliamentary Private Secretary (Parliamentary Private Secretary) the Minister of State in the Colonial Office ( Colonial Office ) , Henry Hopkinson , and held this position until the end of Churchill's tenure 1955th

In 1956, Churchill's successor, Anthony Eden , appointed him Parliamentary Private Secretary to Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd . He remained in this post until the end of Eden's tenure on October 8, 1959. During this time, he did not consistently represent the views of the conservative Tories and spoke out against the British invasion during the Suez Crisis , among other things . He was also considered pro-American and an early proponent of the European idea, albeit not a European federation.

In his constituency of Winchester, he campaigned against the Gas Council's planned construction of a large underground reservoir in 1962 to store gas imported from Algeria .

When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan carried out an extensive cabinet reshuffle on July 13, 1962 , which went down in British history as the " Night of the Long Knives" , Smithers took over as Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs) held a junior ministerial post in the Foreign Ministry and held the post until he left the House of Commons on March 9, 1964.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe

After Smithers had been nominated by Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home for the office of Secretary General of the Council of Europe in early 1964 , he renounced his lower house mandate on March 9, 1964 and succeeded Lodovico Benvenuti as Secretary General of the Council of Europe on March 16, 1969 . He held this office for more than five years until he was replaced by Lujo Tončić-Sorinj on September 16, 1969.

Subsequently, Prime Minister Harold Wilson of the Labor Party had intended to propose Smithers for elevation to the nobility as a life peer , but this was rejected by the opposition leader of the Conservative Party, Edward Heath , who he considered his "party friend" Smithers to be too pro-American and held the wrong kind of pro-Europeans. Smithers, however, was beaten to the Knight Bachelor and from then on carried the suffix "Sir".

However, disappointment with the behavior of his party chairman led Smithers to settle in Switzerland after his retirement and take on Swiss citizenship . In numerous articles and letters to the editor, he dealt with political issues and, among other things, sharply criticized the Falklands War .

botanist

Smithers was married to Dojean Sayman for over sixty years. The marriage had two daughters, including model Sarah Smithers, who hit the headlines in 1969 when she posed naked for the cover of Henry Sutton's novel The Voyeur .

In his retirement, Smithers concentrated on botany. This interest began at the age of 13 when, in 1926, he was the first child allowed to attend the flower show in Chelsea organized by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) .

In 1970 he bought an abandoned winery above Lake Lugano , where he began growing plants such as shrub peonies (Botan) and also took photos. He expanded the winery into a plant collection of international importance, which was designed into its own ecosystem . When designing the garden, he used around 10,000 plants and later also grew horn clover , angel's trumpets , citrus plants , prairie lilies and many others. The cultured from him magnolias , peonies, lilies and wisteria achieved worldwide notoriety and recognition and joined the lilies places Lilium X "Vico Gold", which he made a sulphureum Lilium bred, he in Burma found. He named an award-winning white peony that he grew after his wife "Dojean". His photographs have been exhibited in the office of the Royal Horticultural Society in London , which honored him with the Veitch Memorial Medal for his services to horticulture .

In 1995 he published an autobiography entitled Adventures of a Gardener , in which he presented the story of his plants and his garden design.

Publications

  • Sir Peter article about his Botan collection in Arts of Asia, March-April 1984, Magazine, Hong Kong, 1984. (Botan is the Japanese name for Japanese bush peonies)
  • Shrub Peony Aristocrats of the Flower World, photos by Josh Westrich - text by Sir Peter Smithers, DuMont, 1990
  • Adventures of a Gardener , 1995

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Florence Benoît-Rohmer, Heinrich Klebes: Council of Europe Law: Towards a Pan-European Legal Area . P. 72, ISBN 9-28715-594-1 , 2005
  2. ^ Klaus Brummer: The Council of Europe: An Introduction , p. 126, ISBN 3-53115-710-8 , 2008
  3. ^ Dougals Martin: Peter Smithers Dies at 92; Spy With a Green Thumb. In: The New York Times. June 25, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Smithers, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smithers, Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, member of the House of Commons, botanist and Secretary General of the Council of Europe
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Yorkshire , England
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 2006
Place of death Vico Morcote , Canton Ticino, Switzerland