Blackwell Reference Online

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British Prime Minister (1963–4). He was born Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, the eldest son of Lord Dunglass, who had extensive estates in Berwickshire and Lanarkshire in the Scottish Border country. When Dunglass succeeded his father as the 13th Earl of Home in 1918, Alec became Lord Dunglass, in turn becoming the 14th Earl when his father died in 1950. He had a traditional aristocratic education at Eton and Oxford and then decided to go into politics, was elected as a Conservative MP in 1931, held various governmental posts and entered the House of Lords in 1951. Harold macmillan's appointment of him as Foreign Secretary (1960–3) was remarkable, as it had been assumed that holders of the highest offices of state should sit in the Commons.When Macmillan resigned after a prostate operation Home surprisingly emerged as Prime Minister, a choice which produced a damaging split in the conservative party, as Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell refused to serve under him. Macleod wrote in The Spectator that a ‘magic circle’ of Old Etonians had made the decision. R. A. butler, he believed, was the choice of the majority of the cabinet and was prevented from becoming premier only by Macmillan's hostility. Unknown to the public, Home was the first peer to be Prime Minister since Salisbury at the beginning of the century, but it was out of the question that he should remain in the Lords. The ... log in or subscribe to read full text