Name Ralph 12th Role Hereditary peer | Education Balliol College Coronation date 1991 | |
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Parents Anne Rosemary Palmer, 11th Baroness Lucas Grandparents Nan Ino Cooper, 10th Baroness Lucas Great-grandparents Auberon Herbert, Lady Florence Amabell Cowper | ||
Ralph Matthew Palmer, 12th Baron Lucas and 8th Lord Dingwall (born 7 June 1951) is the son of Major The Hon. Robert Jocelyn Palmer (fifth child and third son of the 3rd Earl of Selborne) and the 11th Baroness Lucas and 7th Lady Dingwall. He is one of the hereditary peers elected to remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, sitting as a Conservative.
Ralph Lucas attended Twyford School and Eton College. He studied physics at Balliol College, Oxford. He then took articles as a chartered accountant and worked at S. G. Warburg & Co. Ltd. from 1976 to 1988.
On the death of his mother in 1991, he succeeded her as 12th Baron Lucas and 8th Lord Dingwall. He is the current owner of The Good Schools Guide.
He was a Lord in Waiting (Government Whip in the House of Lords) during 1994–97, and the shadow Lords minister for International Development during 1997–98.
He has been married three times, the first time to Clarrissa Marie Lockett, whom he married in 1978; they were divorced in 1995. In 1995, he married his second wife, Amanda Atha, who died in 2000. In 2001, he married Antonia Kennedy Rubinstein.
With his first wife, he had two children, a son and daughter. He has one daughter with his third wife. His son and heir is The Hon. Lewis Edward Palmer (born 7 December 1987).
Lord Lucas is on the Advisory Board of A.C. Grayling's New College of the Humanities.
He became a Fellow of Charter Accountants (FCA) in 1976 and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Mercers.