Home of the Hirsel, Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home

▪ 1996

      BARON, OF COLDSTREAM (SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME), British politician and statesman (b. July 2, 1903, London, England—d. Oct. 9, 1995, Coldstream, Berwickshire, Scotland), as Sir Alec Douglas-Home, served as prime minister from Oct. 19, 1963, to Oct. 16, 1964. Lord Dunglass—the courtesy title he held before he succeeded his father as the 14th Earl of Home—was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. He was defeated in his first political contest (1929) but was successful two years later and sat in the House of Commons as a Unionist (1931-45, 1950-51). While serving (1937-39) as parliamentary private secretary to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he accompanied the prime minister to the meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, that resulted in Czechoslovakia's partition, and he supported the policy of appeasement, claiming that it gave Britain time to rearm. In Winston Churchill's "caretaker" government (May-July 1945), he served as undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. After becoming (1951) the Earl of Home, he entered the House of Lords. He was minister of state for Scotland (1951-55), secretary of state for Commonwealth relations (1955-60), deputy leader (1956-57) and leader (1957-60) of the House of Lords, lord president of the council (1957-60), and foreign secretary (1960-63) before becoming prime minister. Four days after his appointment, he legally relinquished his hereditary titles, retaining the knighthood he had received in 1962. Home held office for only one year before the Conservatives' narrow defeat in the 1964 election led to his resignation. He remained in the House of Commons, functioning as the opposition spokesman for foreign affairs, and from 1970 to 1974 he once again served as foreign secretary. In 1974 he was given a life peerage, and he retired from active politics. Home's books include his autobiography, The Way the Wind Blows (1976), Border Reflections (1979), and Letters to a Grandson (1983).

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