Robert Boothby, Baron Boothby

Blue plaque in Eaton Square, London

Robert John Graham Boothby, Baron Boothby, KBE (also known as Bob Boothby, 12 February 1900 – 16 July 1986) was a British Conservative politician.

Biography

The only son of Sir Robert Tuite Boothby, KBE, of Edinburgh and a cousin of Rosalind Kennedy, mother of the broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy, Boothby was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He became a partner in a firm of stockbrokers.

He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Orkney and Shetland in 1923 and was elected as Member of Parliament for East Aberdeenshire in 1924, holding the seat until 1958. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill from 1926 to 1929 and held junior ministerial office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food in 1940–41. However for not declaring an interest when asking a parliamentary question, he had to resign his post and go to the back benches. During World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, retiring with the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

Boothby advocated the UK's entry into the European Community (now the European Union) and was a British delegate to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1949 until 1957. He was a prominent commentator on public affairs on radio and television, often taking part in the long-running BBC radio programme Any Questions. He also advocated the virtues of herring as a food.^[1]

He was Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Economic Affairs, 1952–56; Honorary President of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, 1934, Rector of the University of St Andrews, 1958–61; Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 1961–63, and President, Anglo-Israel Association, 1962–75. He was awarded an Honorary LLD by St Andrews, 1959 and was made an Honorary Burgess of the Burghs of Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Turriff and Rosehearty. He was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1950, a KBE in 1953.

Boothby was raised to the peerage as a life peer with the title Baron Boothby of Buchan and Rattray Head in the County of Aberdeen, on 22 August 1958.

There is a blue plaque on his house in Eaton Square, London.

Private life

Boothby had a colourful, if reasonably discreet, private life, mainly because the press refused to print what they knew of him, or were prevented from doing so. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, said in a 1991 interview with Woodrow Wyatt that "The press knew all about it", referring to his affairs.^[2] She also described him as "a bounder but not a cad".^[2] He was married twice: in 1935 to Diana Cavendish (marriage dissolved in 1937) and in 1967 to Wanda Sanna. The writer and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy has asserted that Boothby fathered at least three children by the wives of other men^[3] (two by one woman, one by another)."

From 1930 he had a long affair with Dorothy Macmillan, wife of the Conservative politician and later Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.^[2] Boothby is thought by many to have been the father of Sarah Macmillan, who was raised by the Macmillans as their own daughter.^[2][4] This connection to Macmillan, via his wife, has been seen as one of the reasons why the police didn't investigate the death of Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire, who died in the presence of suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams.^[2] The duke was Lady Dorothy's brother, and it is thought the police were wary of drawing press attention to her while she was being unfaithful.^[2]

Boothby was bisexual^[2] and had a homosexual relationship with Ronald Kray, the younger Kray twin. Although initially known to the Sunday Express, the paper opted not to publish a story that would damage the Conservative Party, a party which the Express supported. Subsequently when the matter was reported anonymously in 1964 in the Labour supporting Sunday Mirror tabloid^[5][6] (with the parties subsequently named by the German magazine Stern),^[7] Boothby threatened to sue; the Mirror backed down, sacked its editor, apologised, and paid Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Subsequently, other newspapers became less willing to cover the Krays' connections and misdeeds, and as Boothby was a Conservative politician, his party did not subsequently press for the Krays to be pursued by the police for fear of further publicity about the alleged relationship.^{[citation needed]}In a documentary broadcast by Channel 4, made by Richard Bond, entitled "The Gangster and the Pervert Peer", it is claimed that journalists who investigated Boothby were subjected to break-ins and other harassment, and that much of this suppression was directed by Arnold Goodman.

He also had a close friendship with Tom Driberg, who was a homosexual Labour MP, a friend of KGB spy Guy Burgess and, according to Pamela Cullen, "the most disreputable MP in the House",^[2].

After his death in Westminster aged 86, Boothby's ashes were scattered at Rattray Head near Crimond, Aberdeenshire.

References

Publications

• The New Economy, 1943;
• I Fight to Live, 1947;
• My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow, 1962;
• Boothby: recollections of a rebel, 1978.

External links

• The Picture we Dare not Print