François d'Harcourt, 12th Duke of Harcourt (10 December 1928 – 5 November 2020) was a French politician.

Biography

He was the son of François-Charles d'Harcourt, the 11th Duke of Harcourt, and Antoinette Gérard, a French resistant. From 1954 to 1955, François served as Chief of Cabinet of the Ministry of Armed Forces. Also a journalist, he was an editor for '' Jours de France'' from 1956 to 1958. He was a major reporter abroad in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

in 1960 and

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

in 1962. D'Harcourt was elected General Councillor of the Canton of Balleroy, serving from 1955 to 1958 and again from 1967 to 1994. He was elected to the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the r ...

for Calvados's 4th constituency on 11 March 1973. He was reelected continuously until 1986. He was a member of the

Union for French Democracy The Union for French Democracy (french: Union pour la démocratie française, UDF) was a centre to centre-right political party in France. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to ...

and was part of the Centrist Union of Democrats for Progress. On 17 January 1975, he voted to decriminalize abortion under the "Veil Law". In 1988, he was elected to serve for

Calvados's 5th constituency The 5th constituency of Calvados is a French legislative constituency in the Calvados ''département''. Like the other 576 French constituencies, it elects one MP using the two-round system, with a run-off if no candidate receives over 50% of ...

, where he remained until 1997. After his father's death in 1997, d'Harcourt became the 12th

Duke of Harcourt {{Unreferenced, date=June 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot) When the Viking chieftain Rollo obtained via the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte the territories which would later make up Normandy, he distributed them as estates among his main supporters. Am ...

and Duke of Beuvron. He was married to Isabelle Roubeau. He died in

Annecy Annecy ( , ; frp, Èneci or ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France. It lies on the northern tip of Lake Annecy, south of Geneva, Switzerland. Nickname ...

on 5 November 2020 at the age of 91.

Works

*''L'Afrique à l'heure H'' (1960) *''Asie, réveil d'un monde'' (1963) *''Demain, la France, l'Europe, le Monde'' (1965)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:d'Harcourt, Francois 1928 births 2020 deaths Politicians from Paris Members of the National Assembly (France) Union for French Democracy politicians Francois Dukes of France