This Is Your Life: Robert Boothby

Lord BOOTHBY (1900-1986)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Robert Boothby, former politician, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews as he was leaving a meeting at the BBC Television Centre.

Robert, who was born in Edinburgh, was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. Having entered politics in the early 1920s, he was elected MP for Aberdeen and Kincardine East in 1924. He served as Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill from 1926 to 1929 and held junior ministerial office as Secretary to the Ministry of Food in 1940–41. A prominent commentator on public affairs on radio and television, he often took part in the long-running BBC radio programme Any Questions.

He held his seat until its abolition in 1950, when he was elected for its successor constituency of East Aberdeenshire. Re-elected a final time in 1955, he gave up the seat in August 1958 when he was raised to the peerage as a life peer with the title Baron Boothby, of Buchan and Rattray Head in the County of Aberdeen.

"Well now!"

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