6th Baron Carrington, KG, GCMG, CH, MC, PC 1919-2018

_. Lord Carrington, KG, GCMG, CH, MC, PC, the last surviving politician to have served in the Second World War, died 9 July, 2018, aged 99. He was a peer for almost 80 years, and the last surviving politician to have served under Churchill.

Lord Carrington, Tory grandee and former Foreign Secretary, was the 6th Baron (Peerage of Ireland, 1796, and Peerage of GB, 1797); and a life peer as Baron Carington of Upton (1999).

Peter Alexander Rupert Carington was born 6 June, 1919, son of the fifth Baron and the Hon Sibyl Marion Colville (who d 1946), daughter of the 2nd Viscount Colville of Culross; and succeeded to the peerages on his father's death, 19 November, 1938.

Lord Carrington married 25 April, 1942, Iona (who died 7 June, 2009), daughter of Lt-Col Sir Francis Kennedy McClean, AFC, of Huntercombe Place, Henley-on-Thames, by whom he had issue, a son and two daughters.

In World War II he served in North West Europe in the Grenadier Guards; was Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries 1951-54; Parl Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Oct 1954-Nov 1956; High Commissioner for the UK in Australia, Nov 1956-Oct 1959; First Lord of the Admiralty 1959-63; Minister without Portfolio and Leader of the House of Lords, 1963-64; Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords 1964-70, and again 1974-79; Secretary of State for Defence in the Heath Administration 1970-74; Secretary of State for Energy, 1974; Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, 1979-82 (resigned over the Falklands crisis).

He served as Chairman, GEC 1983-4; Secretary General of NATO 1984-88; Chairman Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum 1983-88; was Chancellor of the University of Reading, &c.

Lord Carrington was awarded the Military Cross (1945); appointed to the Privy Council (1959); KCMG (1958); Knight of the Garter, (1985); Chancellor of the Order of the Garter from 1994; GCMG (1988).

He is succeeded in the peerages by his only son the Hon Rupert Francis John Carington, who was born 2 December, 1948, who married in 1989, Daniela, daughter of Flavio Diotallevi.

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