John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter was born in Harrogate on 2 June 1908.[1] He was the only son of Conservative politician Sir Archibald Boyd-Carpenter MP and his wife Annie Dugdale. His grandfather was William Boyd Carpenter, an Anglican bishop.[1] He was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union in 1930.[2] He graduated with a BA in History, and a Diploma in Economics in 1931. He was Harmsworth Law Scholar at the Middle Temple in 1933 and called to Bar the next year, and practised in the London and South-East Circuit.[1]
War service
Boyd-Carpenter joined the Scots Guards in 1940 and held various staff appointments, including with the Allied Military Government in Italy, retiring with the rank of Major.[2]
Political career
Boyd-Carpenter contested the Limehouse district for the London County Council in 1934. He was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Thames in 1945,[3] holding the seat until 1972, when he was raised to the peerage.
When Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in October 1963, he initially promised Boyd-Carpenter the job of Leader of the House of Commons, but in the end the job went to Selwyn Lloyd who was returning to government from the backbenches.[5] In 1971, Lloyd was elected Speaker of the House, another job that Boyd-Carpenter had desired; The Times said his failure to become speaker was a "major disappointment" of his political career.[2]
Following the Conservative defeat in 1964,[3] he served as Opposition Front Bench Spokesman on Housing, Local Government and Land, 1964–66, and as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee from 1964 to 1970.[1] He later held a number of Party and business appointments.[1]
As the first Chairman of the UK's CAA, Boyd-Carpenter was in charge at the time of the collapse of the UK airline Court Line and their subsidiary Clarksons Travel Group in August 1974.
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