Name Christopher Baron | ||
 | ||
Christopher Samuel Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat (born 23 February 1937) is a British Conservative Party politician, business man, company director, journalist and author. He was a Member of Parliament from 1970–77, then a member of the European Commission, and in 1993 was appointed as a life peer, with a seat in the House of Lords, in which he remains active.
Contents
Family background
Tugendhat's family background includes Austrian-Jewish ancestry on his father's side and Anglo-Irish on his mother's. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. His father, Dr Georg Tugendhat, was born in Vienna, but came to Britain after the First World War to pursue a doctorate at the London School of Economics, and while there married Maire Littledale. Georg Tugendhat traced his paternal origins to the town of Bielitz in Silesia, which until 1918 was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Poland.
Career
Tugendhat was educated at Ampleforth College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, then took up a career in journalism, becoming a features editor and leader writer for The Financial Times from 1960-70. In 1970 he was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for the Cities of London and Westminster, remaining in the House of Commons until 1977, when he resigned after being appointed as a member of the European Commission. He was first appointed to the commission by a Labour government over the head of the nominee of the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, but four years later, as prime minister, Thatcher reappointed him, and he served as vice-president of the Commission from 1981 until 1985.
On 3 December 1980, when he was driving away from his home in Brussels, two bullets were fired at Tugendhat from a car, narrowly missing him; he called the attack "closer than I would have liked." The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt.
Following his role at the European Commission, Tugendhat was chairman of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) from 1986 to 1995, and of the Civil Aviation Authority from 1986 to 1991, when he was succeeded by Christopher Chataway. In 1993 he was appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer on the nomination of John Major.
He later went on to become the chairman of Abbey National, Blue Circle, the European Advisory Board of Lehman Brothers, and the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He was also a director of Rio Tinto and Eurotunnel, among other companies.
Additional work
Tugendhat is a member of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) Advisory Board, an independent financial think tank which serves as a neutral, non-lobbying platform for exchanges among official institutions and private sector counter-parties worldwide.
Personal
He married Julia Lissant Dobson; they have two sons, James (born 1971) and Angus (born 1974). His younger brother, Michael, is a judge of the High Court of England and Wales, and his nephew Tom Tugendhat has been the Conservative Member of Parliament for Tonbridge and Malling since May 2015.
Honours
Tugendhat was knighted in the 1990 Birthday Honours. On 15 October 1993 he was created a life peer as Baron Tugendhat of Widdington in the County of Essex. In 1998 he became the Chancellor of the University of Bath, from which position he stood down in 2013, to be succeeded by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. He was chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the UK's first academic health science centre, until December 2011.
In 1998 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Bath.