The 2nd Baron Elton 1930-2023

Lord Elton, the 2nd Baron, who died 19 August, 2023, aged 93, was a Conservative peer and sometime a deputy speaker of the House of Lords.

Rodney Elton was born 2 March, 1930, the only son of the 1st Baron Elton (1892-1973), and his wife the former Dedi Hartmann (who died 15 March, 1977), daughter of Gustav Hartmann, of Oslo.

His father, Godfrey Elton, was an academic and historian, a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1919, and was lecturer in modern history from 1919 to 1939, dean of the college between 1921 and 1923 and tutor from 1927 to 1934. In 1923 he published The Revolutionary Idea in France, 1789–1878. Godfrey Elton joined the Labour Party shortly after the end of World War I and stood unsuccessfully for Thornbury in the 1924 and 1929 general elections. He was a strong supporter of Ramsay MacDonald, whose son Malcolm MacDonald had been his pupil at Oxford, and followed him into National Labour. On 16 January 1934, on MacDonald's initiative, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Elton, of Headington in the County of Oxford., a controversial creation.

Rodney Elton succeeded his father, 18 April, 1973, as the 2nd Baron, and was elected to the House of Lords in 1999.

Lord Elton was twice married; firstly, on 18 September, 1958 (div 1979), to Anne Frances Tilney, 1st daughter of Brigadier Robert Adolphus George Tilney CBE DSO, of The Hall, Sutton Bonnington, co. Leicester, by his wife Frances Moore Barclay, daughter of Robert Cochrane Barclay, of Virginia, USA; and married 2ndly, 24 August, 1979, Susan Richenda Gurney, CVO (born 14 September, 1937), scion of that landed gentry family, Lady-in-Waiting to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 1987-2022, 3rd daughter of Sir Hugh Gurney, KCMG, MVO (1878-1968), and his wife the former Mariota Susan Carnegie (1892-1980), scion of the Earls of Southesk.

Lord Elton is survived by his second wife and four children of his first marriage, a son, the Hon Edward Paget Elton (born 28, May, 1966), who now succeeds to the peerage, and three daughters, the Hon Annabel (born 24 Oct, 1960), the Hon Jane (born 15 Jan 1962), and the Hon Lucy (born 19 Dec, 1963). The younest daughter is Lady Gray, wife of the 23rd Lord Gray (born 3 Sept, 1964).

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