Tom Boardman, Baron Boardman

Thomas Gray Boardman, Baron Boardman, MC, TD, DL, PC (12 January 1919 – 10 March 2003) was a World War II tank commander, English Conservative politician, Cabinet Minister and chairman of National Westminster Bank Plc.

Thomas Gray Boardman was born on 12 January 1919, just after the end of the First World War. He was educated at Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire. His father was a landowner and Lord Mayor of Daventry, who farmed 500 acres in Northamptonshire. Like many of his generation, Boardman’s formative years were shaped by the increasingly real prospect of war. On leaving school, Boardman paid £500 to become an articled clerk with a local solicitor, but in 1938, despite an early interest in the law and politics, enlisted into the British Army as a trooper in the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry.

At the start of the World War II, Boardman was selected for training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 14 September 1940. He promoted through the ranks to Lieutenant-Colonel and commanded the 1st Battalion Northamptonshire Yeomanry during the North West Europe campaign. He won the Military Cross (MC) in Normandy during Operation Overlord, in the early part of the operation to trap German forces in the Falaise Pocket.

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