William Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech
|
The Right Honourable The Lord Harlech KG GCMG PC |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Secretary of State for the Colonies | |
|
In office 28 May 1936 – 16 May 1938 |
|
| Monarch |
Edward VIII George VI |
| Prime Minister | Stanley Baldwin |
| Preceded by | James Henry Thomas |
| Succeeded by | Malcolm MacDonald |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 11 April 1885 |
| Died | 14 February 1964 (aged 78) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse(s) | Lady Beatrice Gascoyne-Cecil (1891-1980) |
William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech KG GCMG PC (11 April 1885 – 14 February 1964) was a British Conservative politician and banker.
Harlech, the son of George Ormsby-Gore, 3rd Baron Harlech, and Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of Charles Gordon, 10th Marquess of Huntly, was born at Eaton Square, London. He was educated at Eton College and New College, Oxford.
Ormsby-Gore served in the Territorial Army, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Shropshire Yeomanry in 1907 and promoted lieutenant in 1911.
He was mobilized at the outbreak of the First World War and accompanied his regiment to Egypt, where he was promoted captain in 1915 and went onto the general staff. In 1916 he joined the Arab Bureau as an intelligence officer, attached to the British High Commissioner Sir Henry A. McMahon.
According to Scott Anderson in Lawrence in Arabia (Doubleday, 2013, at p. 254), Ormsby-Gore by 1916 had become a convert to Judaism and was one of the primary figures in the British government who favoured the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
He was recalled to England in 1917 to serve as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Milner and as assistant secretary in the War Cabinet headed by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and to Sir Mark Sykes. Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, a personal friend, took refuge in Ormsby-Gore's London home while the former was in the capital for the cabinet approval of the Balfour Declaration. With Weizmann's approval, Ormsby-Gore was the British military liaison officer with the Zionist mission in the Holy Land (then lately liberated from Ottoman Turkish rule) during March to August 1918. After the armistice, he was part of the British delegation to the peace conference at Paris in 1919.
...
Wikipedia