Julian Amery
Harold Julian Amery, Baron Amery of Lustleigh, PC (27 March 1919 – 3 September 1996) was a British Conservative Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 39 of the 42 years between 1950 and 1992. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1960.
The Lord Amery of Lustleigh
Office established
Office abolished
27 March 1919
3 September 1996 (aged 77)
United Kingdom
Amery was created a life peer upon his retirement from the House of Commons in 1992. For three decades, he was a leading figure in the Conservative Monday Club. He was the son-in-law of Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan. His brother, John, was hanged for high treason for supporting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Second World War.[1]
Early and family life[edit]
Amery was born in Chelsea, London. His father was Leo Amery, a British statesman and Conservative politician. He was educated at Eaton House,[2] Summer Fields School, Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. While an undergraduate, he had a brief romance with the future novelist Barbara Pym, who was six years his senior.[3][4]
Military service[edit]
Before the Second World War started, Amery was a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and later an attaché for the British Foreign Office in Belgrade. After the war began he joined the RAF as a sergeant in 1940, then was commissioned and transferred to the British Army on the General List in 1941, reaching the rank of Captain.
He spent 1941–42 in the eastern Mediterranean (the Middle East, Malta, Yugoslavia) and served as Liaison Officer to the Albanian Resistance Movement in 1943–44 ("The Musketeers": Captain Julian Amery, Major David Smiley and Lieutenant-Colonel Neil McLean). The following year, Amery went to China to work with General Carton de Wiart, then Prime Minister's Personal Representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Amery became a close friend of King Zog of Albania and described him as "the cleverest man I have ever met".[5]
Death[edit]
Amery died on 3 September 1996 in Westminster, London. He is buried with his wife (who predeceased him) at the Church of St John the Baptist in Lustleigh, Devon, along with his father Leo Amery.[13]