Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley

Merlin Charles Sainthill Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley, FSA (17 June 1939 – 5 September 2022) was a British hereditary peer, author, and monarchist.[1] In 1941, at the age of two, he succeeded his first cousin once removed, Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 6th Baron Sudeley, to the Barony of Sudeley and until the reforms of House of Lords Act 1999, he regularly sat as a hereditary peer.

The Right Honourable
The Lord Sudeley
Baron Sudeley in 1987
Member of the House of Lords
Hereditary peer
17 June 1960 – 11 November 1999
Personal details
Born(1939-06-17)17 June 1939
Died5 September 2022(2022-09-05) (aged 83)
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
Spouses
The Hon Elizabeth Villiers
​
​
(m. 1980; div. 1988)​
    Margarita née Danko
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1999; div. 2006)​
      Tatiana Dudina
      ​
      (m. 2010)​
      Parent(s)Michael Hanbury-Tracy (father)
      Colline Amabel St Hill (mother)
      Alma materWorcester College, Oxford University of Oxford
      OccupationPolitician, author, activist

      Hanbury-Tracy's reputation was severely damaged in later life by racist comments he made in reports and speeches, alongside comments he made praising the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.[2][3] A member of the Conservative Party all his adult life, he was also sometimes President and Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club for seventeen years. He was Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League,[4] and President of the Traditional Britain Group until death.[5]

      Early life and education

      Merlin Hanbury-Tracy was born on 17 June 1939 to Captain Michael Hanbury-Tracy, a Scots Guards officer, who died from wounds received at Dunkirk, and Colline Annabel, only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Collis George Herbert St. Hill, the Royal North Devon Hussars, commander of the 2/5 battalion of Sherwood Foresters, who was also killed by a sniper at Villers-Plouich, France, on 8 July 1917.[6]

      Hanbury-Tracy's parents sent him to Eton College, one of England’s premier public schools. He later graduated in history from Worcester College, Oxford. Hanbury-Tracy was also sometimes an adjunct lecturer at the University of Bristol.[7] He served his National Service obligations in the ranks of the Scots Guards.

      Political Activity

      Lord Sudeley was a member of the House of Lords for 39 years. He inherited his peerage aged 2, and finally took his seat in the House at the age of 21. He was a regular attender and introduced several measures, most notably the Bill to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts and, in 1981, a Bill to uphold the Book of Common Prayer.

      Expulsion from the House of Lords

      Hanbury-Tracy was one of the unelected hereditary peers expelled from the Upper House by the House of Lords Act 1999. Faced with losing his hereditary position, Hanbury-Tracy opposed democratic reforms to the House of Lords. Hanbury-Tracy claimed the House of Lords should be left unreformed, declaring that "If it isn't broken why mend it?" He also said that since he believed inherited titles were "inextricably" tied to the monarchy that it was "odd that they just want to touch one institution and not the other". He also claimed that the House of Lords had developed a 'wealth of experience', though he did not specify the exact nature of this expertise or why it was not replicable. In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the reactionary International Monarchist League.[8]

      From the early 1970s, Hanbury-Tracy was active in the Conservative Monday Club of which he became president in February 1991.[9] He wrote for them a leading essay on "The Role of Heredity in Politics",[10] produced a Club Policy Paper against Lords Reform in December 1979, and in 1991 they published his booklet titled, and arguing for, The Preservation of the House of Lords, with a foreword by parliamentarian John Stokes.

      Racism and praise of Hitler

      Sudelely's reputation was damaged by racist comments he made in speeches and reports. On 2 June 2006, The Times quoted him as stating, in a report of the Monday Club's Annual General Meeting, that "Hitler did well to get everyone back to work". It also reported him saying that "True though the fact may be that some races are superior to others", going on to suggest that such rhetoric might interfere with the Monday Club's hopes of being accepted again in Conservative Party circles.[3]

      In September 2001, the Conservative Party leadership candidate Iain Duncan Smith said the Monday Club was a "viable organisation… in a sense what the party is about".[11] However, six weeks later, after becoming leader, he publicly distanced the party from the Monday Club until it ceased to "promulgate or discuss policies relating to race";[12] he also indicated that no Conservative MPs should contribute to Right Now!, a quarterly magazine of which Lord Sudeley was a Patron, after an article in it described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist".[11]

      At the Western Goals Institute 'El Salvador' Dinner, London, 25 September 1989. L to R: Denis Walker, Sudeley, José Manuel Pacas Castro (El Salvador's Foreign Minister), Andrew Smith (yellow tie), Dr. Harvey Ward

      Lord Sudeley was also a vice-president of the now-defunct Western Goals Institute.[13][14][15]

      Lord Sudeley was also Patron of the Bankruptcy Association (Lloyds Bank foreclosed upon Charles Hanbury-Tracy, 4th Baron Sudeley in 1893, when his debt was covered twice over by large assets) and Convenor of the Forum for Stable Currencies. He was also Lay Patron of the Prayer Book Society and a past President of the Powysland Club.

      Hobbies

      Lord Sudeley once described in Who's Who one of his hobbies as "Ancestor Worship", with "Conversation" being listed in Debrett's. He took great pride in the former family seat of Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire which the family was later forced to sell.[16] In its successful blend of the Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque styles, Toddington is the fore-runner of the Houses of Parliament when the soon-to-be 1st Lord Sudeley was selected as chairman of the new parliamentary committee to settle upon the design. His contributions based upon Toddington's were accepted and enhanced.[17]

      At Easter 1985, in conjunction with the century-old Manorial Society of Great Britain (of which he sat on the Governing Council), Sudeley held a conference at his old home, the proceedings published in a volume entitled The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, taking the history of his family back to Thomas Becket's murder and ultimately to Charlemagne. On 21 November 2006, he arranged a further conference at the Society of Antiquaries of London on "Visual Aspects of Toddington in the 19th century".[18]

      Lord Sudeley has written many published essays, including a history of the English gentleman for a German pharmaceutical magazine, Die Waage. He also wrote a history of the House of Lords in which he promoted its Tory (as opposed to Whig history) interpretation, entitled Peers Through the Mist of Time,.[19] A launch for his book took place at the Brooks's Club in London on 28 September 2018. In his 2021 book Toddington, the Unforgotten Forerunner, Sudeley tells the story of his family's former seat, designed in a blend of Perpendicular Gothic and Picturesque by Charles Hanbury-Tracy, later Chairman of the Commission for the Rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament in the same style, and its tragic and unexplained loss.[20] He is also the author of a satire on Greek mythology (published in John Pudney's famous Pick of Today's Short Stories) and a quantity of politically incorrect short stories mostly published in the London Miscellany magazine.[21] In recent years Sudeley style-edited a definitive monograph on Azerbaijan's architecture, translated from the Russian.

      Personal life

      Lord Sudeley lived in a mansion flat in Dorset Square, London. He had been married three times and divorced twice.[22]

      Sudeley married his first wife on 18 January 1980 (dissolved 1988), Elizabeth Mairi Villiers[23] (3 November 1941 – 29 September 2014),[24] daughter of Derek William Charles Keppel, Viscount Bury (heir-apparent of the 9th Earl of Albemarle) and Lady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart (youngest daughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry,[25] and ex-wife of Alastair Michael Hyde Villiers, a Partner in Panmure Gordon & Company, stockbrokers.

      Sudeley was married secondly in 1999 (dissolved 2006) to Margarita (born 1962) daughter of Nikolai Danko, and ex-wife of Lloyd's broker Nigel Kellett.

      Sudeley married a third time, in 2010, Dr Tatiana Dudina (born 19 August 1950), daughter of Russian Colonel Boris Dudin and Galina Veselovskaya. Dr Dudina holds a doctorate in philology from Moscow State Linguistic University.[24]

      Death

      Lord Sudeley died on 5 September 2022, at the age of 83.[26][27] He was succeeded in the Barony of Sudeley by his fourth cousin once removed, Nicholas Hanbury-Tracy.

      References
      1. "The Guardian". TheGuardian.com. 27 October 1999. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
      2. Out of context
      3. "Lord Sudeley obituary". The Times. 7 July 2023. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
      4. The Monarchist, no.66, p.5, 1985, Norwich, UK
      5. "About | Traditional Britain Group". Traditionalbritain.org. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
      6. The Times, Saturday, 4 Aug 1917, p.4, col.A, Issue 41548.
      7. Debrett's entry]
      8. The Monarchist, no.66, p.5, 1985 Norwich, UK
      9. Monday Club Executive Council Minutes, 25 February 1991, Westminster Hall (W6), House of Commons.
      10. Monday World magazine, Winter, 1971/72.
      11. Morris, Nigel (19 October 2001). "Tories axe right-wing group over race issue". The Independent. ISSN 0951-9467. Retrieved 7 December 2013. Just six weeks ago, before his election, Mr Duncan Smith described the Monday Club as a "viable organisation with the party and they are, in a sense what the party is about". However, in a swift about-turn, three Conservative MPs, Andrew Hunter, Andrew Rosindell and Angela Watkins, were earlier this month instructed by the new leadership to sever their links with the Monday Club. Mr Hunter had been its deputy chairman and associate editor of its Right Now! magazine, which described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist".
      12. Nicholas Watt, Tories cut Monday Club link over race policies, The Guardian, 19 October 2001
      13. Daily Telegraph
      14. The Times
      15. Court & Social Columns, 26 September 1989
      16. The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, 20 academic contributors, published by the Manorial Society of Great Britain, London, 1987, pps:222-234, ISSN 0261-1368
      17. The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, 1987, p.232.
      18. "Book Details".
      19. Publisher: Diehard Books, London,2018, ISBN 978-164316003-0
      20. Diehard Books, pubs.
      21. "The LONDON MISCELLANY A Magazine for Literature and Art First published in 1825". Archived from the original on 21 May 2014.
      22. "A lord and his new bride". Evening Standard. 30 September 2010. Archived from the original on 5 October 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
      23. "Merlin Hanbury-Tracy - England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005 - Ancestry.co.uk".
      24. "Burke's Peerage - the Official Website". Archived from the original on 12 September 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
      25. Daily Telegraph, 17 January 2005
      26. "Lord Sudeley obituary". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
      27. Sudeley, peer who courted controversy with his fondness for reactionary causes – obituary (subscription required)

      Sources
      • Copping, Robert, The Monday Club - Crisis and After May 1975, page 25, published by the Current Affairs Information Service, Ilford, Essex, (P/B).
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon. The Lord, Lords Reform - Why Tamper with the House of Lords, Monday Club publication, December 1979, (P/B).
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon. The Lord, A Guide to Hailes Church, nr. Winchcombe, Gloucester, 1980, (P/B), ISBN 0-7140-2058-3
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Role of Hereditary in Politics, in The Monarchist, January 1982, no.60, Norwich, England.
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, Becket's Murderer - William de Tracy, in Family History magazine, Canterbury, August 1983, vol.13, no.97, pps: 3 - 36.
      • Sudeley, the Rt. Hon.The Lord, essays in The Sudeleys - Lords of Toddington, published by the Manorial Society of Great Britain, London, 1987,(P/B)
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Preservation of The House of Lords Monday Club, London, 1991, (P/B).
      • London Evening Standard newspaper, 27 March 1991 - article: An heir of neglect - A Life in the Home of Lord Sudeley (pps:32-33).
      • Births, Deaths & Marriages, Family Record Centre, Islington, London.
      • Mosley, Charles, (editor) Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, & Knightage 106th edition, Switzerland, (1999), ISBN 2-940085-02-1
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, The Sudeley Bankruptcy in London Miscellany June 1999 edition.
      • OK! magazine, London, issue 175, 20 August 1999, (7-page report on his wedding).
      • Mitchell, Austin, M.P., Farewell My Lords, London, 1999, (P/B), ISBN 1-902301-43-9
      • Gliddon, Gerald, The Aristocracy and The Great War, Norwich, 2002, ISBN 0-947893-35-0
      • Sudeley, The Rt. Hon.The Lord, Usery or Taking Interest for Lending Money, published by the Forum for Stable Currencies, 2004, (P/B).
      • Perry, Maria, The House in Berkeley Square, London,2003.
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