The 15th Earl of Home, KT, CVO, CBE 1943-2022

 The 15th Earl of Home, KT, CVO, CBE, died 22 August, 2022, aged 78. Lord Home, seated at the The Hirsel, Coldstream, Berwickshire, was Chief of the Name and Arms of Home.

David Douglas-Home, son of the former Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home [Lord Home of the Hirsel], was a banker, a director of Morgan Grenfell, & sometime chairman of Coutts & Co [until 2013].

David Alexander Cospatrick Douglas-Home was born 20 November, 1943. His father, Alexander Frederick [Alec] Douglas-Home, KT, PC, then styled Lord Dunglass [born 2 July, 1903], was Conservative MP for Lanarkshire, and PPS to the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 1935-40. Dunglass succeeded his father, 11 July, 1951, as 14th Earl of Home [Peerage of Scotland, cr 1605], and Lord Dunglass [cr Scot, 1605], 4th Baron Douglas of Douglas [UK, cr 1875], and 19th Lord Home [Scot, cr 1473]. He held senior Cabinet posts in the Churchill, Eden and Macmillan adminstrations [Foreign Sec 1960-63]. The 14th Earl renounced his peerages of life, 23 Oct 1963, and was elected, as Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Conservative MP for Perthshire and Kinross-shire, and appointed Prime Minister and 1st Lord of the Treasury, a post he held until his defeat to Harold Wilson at the 1964 General Election. He was leader of the Opposition, 1964-65, and Foreign Secretary in the Heath government, 1970-74. In 1974 he was created a life peer as Baron Home of the Hirsel.

David Douglas-Home's mother was Elizabeth Hester Alington [1909-90], whose father had been headmaster of Eton.

David Douglas-Home succeeded to the peerages disclaimed by his father, on the death of Lord Home, 9 October, 1995, and was elected to the House of Lords in 1999, and served for some time on the Conservative front bench.

The 15th Earl was appointed CBE in 1991, and CVO in 1997. In 2014 he was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Thistle, and was installed at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.

He married 10 Oct, 1972, Jane Margaret Williams-Wynne [born 20 February, 1949], the second daughter of Colonel John Francis Williams-Wynne, CBE, DSO, of Peniarth, Tywyn, Gwynedd, by whom he had issue, a son, Michael, and two daughters, Lady Iona [born 1980], wife of Viscount Lifford's heir, and Lady Mary [born 1982]. The son, Michael David Douglas-Home, styled Lord Dunglass, who was born 30 Nov, 1987, succeeds as 16th Earl of Home.

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