Warrender, Victor – MP was helped by famous Grantham schoolgirl

 

Victor Warrender, (1899-1993)

VICTOR Alexander George Anthony Warrender, 1st Baron Bruntisfield MC, also known as Sir Victor Warrender, Bt, was elected Grantham’s Conservative MP in 1923 and held the seat until 1942 when among his helpers was one Margaret Roberts, destined to become Prime Minister herself.

From 1940 to 1945 in Winston Churchill’s war-time coalition Government. In 1942 he was ennobled as Baron Bruntisfield of Boroughmuir in the City of Edinburgh.

The eldest son of Vice-Admiral Sir George Warrender, 7th Baronet, and Lady Ethel Maud Ashley-Cooper, daughter of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 8th Earl of Shaftesbury he was baptised with Queen Victoria as one of his godparents and educated at Eton.

He served as a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards in the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross.

After Baldwin became prime minister for the third time in June 1935, Warrender was made Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Already in November 1935 he exchanged this office for that of Financial Secretary to the War Office. He continued in this post when Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937. When Chamberlain reshuffled his government in early April 1940,

Warrender once again became Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. He retained this office when Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, and continued in it until Churchill resigned in July 1945. On 10 March 1942 Warrender was elevated to the peerage as Baron Bruntisfield, o.

Lord Bruntisfield married Dorothy Rawson daughter of Lt-Col Richard Hamilton Rawson, MP for Reigate, in 1920. The couple divorced in 1945. He then married Tania, daughter of Dr Michael Kolin, in 1948.