Grey Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie

Alexander Patrick Greysteil Hore-Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie, (26 November 1939 – 24 September 2021), usually known as Grey Gowrie or Lord Gowrie, was an Irish-born British hereditary peer, politician, and businessman. Lord Gowrie was also the hereditary Clan Chief of Clan Ruthven in Scotland. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and held posts in academia for a period, in the US and London, including time working with poet Robert Lowell and at Harvard University.

Gowrie was a Conservative Party politician for some years, including a period in the British Cabinet. He held ministerial posts under Margaret Thatcher, in the areas of employment and Northern Ireland, and was Minister of State for the Arts, as well as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with responsibility for Civil Service reform. Offered a promotion to full Secretary of State, with responsibility for education across the UK, he turned it down. Previously an arts dealer, he moved to Sotheby's for a reputed salary of around £150,000, chairing parts of the art auction business. He later chaired the Arts Council of England (1994–1998).

He published several volumes of poetry, with a collected edition released in 2014, and a volume on the artist Derek Hill; he was also a contributing author for a book on British painting. He underwent a heart transplant at Harefield Hospital in his early sixties. He died at his home in Llanfechain, Powys, Wales, in September 2021.

Life

Early life and education

Alexander Patrick Greysteil Hore-Ruthven was born on 26 November 1939, in Dublin, Ireland, the elder son of Major the Hon. Patrick Hore-Ruthven and Pamela Margaret Fletcher. His father was the only surviving son of Alexander Hore-Ruthven, later the 1st Earl of Gowrie in its new creation, and his wife Zara. He had one sibling, younger brother Malise Ruthven, later a writer. His paternal grandfather was a soldier and colonial official, and his maternal grandfather an Anglican cleric, A. H. Fletcher. He was known as "Grey", short for his third forename, to most, and "Greysteil" to close friends. His surname drew on the Ruthven clan of Scotland, a name once outlawed, and the Hore family of County Wexford, Ireland.

His parents were both active in Cairo during the Second World War, his father, "Pat" to the family, as a major in the Rifle Brigade, and his mother working with the intelligence services. His parents left Grey, at the age of three months, with his maternal grandmother in Ireland. His father was killed in action at Tripoli in 1942, while attached to the then-new SAS, at which point Gowrie became his paternal grandfather's heir apparent; his grandparents played an active role in his upbringing thereafter. On his mother's return to Ireland in early 1942 while pregnant with his brother, they lived for a period in what she described as a dreary house in Greystones, County Wicklow. Hore-Ruthven was educated at Eton, where he contributed poetry, fiction and prose to school magazine ''Parade''; he was later elected to the elite Eton Society, more commonly known as Pop.

When his grandfather, who had been the Governor-General of Australia

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases