All,
Lucy Lady Duff-Gordon's grandson, Anthony Giffard, Earl of Halsbury, who passed away January 14, 2000, at the age of 91, was for many years an important figure in business and politics in England.
A scientist by profession, "Tony" Halsbury was a Fellow of the Royal Society. He began his career as a research chemist, having studied physics at Chelsea Polytechnic and earned a 1st class external degree from London University in 1935, the year his celebrated - and notorious - grandmother died.
(Tony told me that, in-between classes and trying to support his family, he used to walk from his lodgings in Chelsea all the way to Lucy's house in Hampstead to have lunch or tea with her. He remembered how they used to talk, play cards, play the piano and sing, although she was then developing bad health in the form of sciatica which proved due to breast cancer. "She was great fun, " he said, "and we were fast friends.")
After a time with Lever Bros., Tony spent 2 years at Decca Records where he and a team of chemists developed an "unbreakable" vinyl disc.
As Managing Director of the National Research Development Corporation, a job he came into as a Labour Government appointee in 1949, Tony blossomed, leading advancements in technology in the burgeoning field of computers. Through his work with NRDC, he is considered today to have been one of the true pioneers in Britain's computer industry. He later served as president of the British Computer Society which still maintains as its logo a design of Tony's based on his own family crest.
Tony went on to serve on the Science Museum Advisory Council, as Governor of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and as Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers.
He also chaired the Institute of Cancer Research. Although a defender of the use of animals for medical experimentation, Tony authored a private member's bill in the House of Lords to regulate conditions for laboratory animals.
From 1960-62, Tony was Governor of the BBC and during this same period chaired the Committee on Decimal Currency, the findings of which body lead the way for England's conversion to the decimal system. He also designed several of the new coins.
In 1967 Tony Halsbury served as founding Chancellor of Brunel University, a position he maintained till 1998.
He would later chair the Review Body on Doctor's and Dentists' Pay and the Department Committee Inquiry into the Pay of Nurses and Midwives. The former proved contentious and he was obliged to resign. The latter ended more happily with the committee being enabled to recommend higher pay raises for nursing personnel than the Government had previously approved.
Tony's later years were spent in drafting and finally presenting before the House of Lords (in 1996) his controversial Obscenity Bill in which he called for a legal redefinition of p~~~~~~~~~. This bill did not pass the House and though his disappointment was great over its defeat, he was far more troubled by the bill proposed in 1998 to abolish hereditary peerage rights in the House of Lords.
As his grandfather, the 1st Earl, had been in 1909, Tony was a staunch opponent to the proposition of altering the historic composition of the House of Lords.
(The 1st Earl of Halsbury had been a notable personage, serving as Lord High Chancellor -"Keeper of the King's Conscience" - for 17 years in three Conservative administrations, the longest tenure in the history of that office. He is best remembered today as author of the definitive "Halsbury's Laws of England.")
It was fortunate for Tony that he did not live to see the outcome of the House of Lords debacle which would have hurt him terribly.
He suffered a massive stroke in August of 1999 and though he showed periodic signs of his former self, he required constant care and was moved to a nursing home in Dorset where one of his daughters looked after him.
I was to have visited Tony in October at his invitation (made during my last visit with him the previous March). He wanted to show me some scrapbooks he'd recently come upon, one being an album he and his sister had kept of the summers they spent with their grandmother at her house at Versailles.
My last letter from him was to the effect that "the guest room is ready, my friend" and so "is your chair and mine before the fire." But days scribbling in my pad at his side were not to be.
It was with some concern that I wrote him after not having received a letter in some time; we had written twice a month for nearly ten years. I was naturally broken-hearted when I received a letter from his daughter telling of his condition. I offered to keep my date and come over if I could be of any help at all. But there was nothing to be done but send the flowers which I expect he never saw.
He died the following January. I was not able to attend his funeral but I did make it over for the special memorial service held for him in April at St. Peter ad vincula.
It was my farewell to "Tony" and indeed a tribute I was honored to pay to this great man who had befriended me across class, cultural, and generational lines, who opened his heart and his home to me so that as he as looked into his well of memories, I might record them for posterity. I will never forget the privilege he bestowed upon me and I hope my work, when it sees the light of day, will do justice to him and the loving memories he so thoughtfully shared.
Randy
