Derek Michael Coombs (12 August 1931 – 30 December 2014) was a British Conservative politician. He was

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

Birmingham Yardley Birmingham Yardley is a constituency of part of the city of Birmingham represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Jess Phillips of the Labour Party. Yardley Rural District was annexed to Birmingham under the 1911 ...

from 1970 to 1974, when he lost to

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Sydney Tierney Sydney Tierney (16 September 1923 – 6 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and former President of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). Union career Tierney joined one of the forerunners of USDAW in 1938 wh ...

. He was subsequently a businessman, and later he was chairman of ''

Prospect Prospect may refer to: General * Prospect (marketing), a marketing term describing a potential customer * Prospect (sports), any player whose rights are owned by a professional team, but who has yet to play a game for the team * Prospect (mining ...

'' magazine.

Family

Coombs married twice, first, in Q. 1, 1959 in Sutton Coldfield, to the elder sister Patricia (b. Leeds North, Q4, 1930) of

Peter O'Toole Peter Seamus O'Toole (; 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic ...

, by whom he had two sons, Sian (b. Q1, 1967) and Fiann (b. Q4, 1968). Coombs is survived by his second wife, actress Jennifer Lonsdale, mother of his sons Jack and Adam, see below. In 2010 his youngest son Adam, having just left Bryanston School, died of an accidental drug overdose in the hilltown of Manali, in India's Valley of the Gods, while on his gap year, before he was due to begin a philosophy degree course at Manchester University. For about the last 11 of his 83 years Coombs suffered from progressive dementia. He lived at

Stepleton House Stepleton House is a 17th-century country house in the parish of Iwerne Stepleton in Dorset, situated about north of Blandford Forum, Dorset, England. It is a Grade I listed building. Originally built around a courtyard, the house is now a six- ...

, near

Iwerne Courtney Iwerne Courtney (), also known as Shroton, is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset. It lies approximately north-west of Blandford Forum. It is sited by the small River Iwerne between Hambledon Hill to the south-west and t ...

(Shroton) in Dorset, and in

Chelsea, London Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area. Chelsea histori ...

. A well-attended memorial service was held in

Blandford Forum Blandford Forum ( ), commonly Blandford, is a market town in Dorset, England, sited by the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour about northwest of Poole. It was the administrative headquarters of North Dorset District until April 2019, when this ...

Parish Church on Saturday, 31 January 2015, followed by a function in the Blandford Forum Corn Exchange.

''Prospect'' magazine

Coombs, who once tried to buy the ''New Statesman'',Financiers take control of Prospect mag
''The Guardian'', 8 May 2008 was Chairman of ''Prospect'', the intellectual monthly magazine founded in 1995 by Coombs and by former ''Financial Times'' journalist David Goodhart, who edited it. Coombs pumped £350,000 into the venture. He had a regular column "Chairman's Corner" until 2005. in 2008, George Robinson, a director of London-based hedge fund Sloane Robinson Investment Management, and Peter Hall, of boutique fund manager Hunter Hall, each acquired 26% of the title after Coombs, the magazine's chairman and largest shareholder, sold his 40% stake.

Business connections

In the 1950s, Coombs attempted, but failed, to acquire the film rights for the first four

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

novels. The Coombs family still owns the Bank and Insurance provide
S & U plc
which specialises in pay-day loans and motor insurance for people with poor credit rating. Derek Coombs receives an estimated payment of around £120,000 per annum from the company in lieu of a pension arrangement S&U operates under th
LoansAtHome4U
an
Advantage Finance
brands, and the Coombs family still has influence. The Coombs family further holds stakes i
Metalrax
an engineering venture

References

External links

*
Catalogue of Coombs' papers
held at the

Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collecti ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coombs, Derek 1937 births 2014 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1970–1974