Alec Douglas-Home

Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home (July 2, 1903 - October 9, 1995) was a Scottish politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a year from October 1963 to October 1964.

The Right Hon. Lord Home

Period in Office:	19 October, 1963 - 16 October, 1964
PM Predecessor:	Harold Macmillan
PM Successor:	Harold Wilson
Date of Birth:	July 2, 1903
Place of Birth:	Mayfair, London
Political Party:	Conservative

He was born in London, the eldest son of a Scottish earl, and from 1918 was styled Lord Dunglass. His brother was the dramatist, William Douglas-Home. After an education at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, he became a Conservative MP in 1931. His aristocratic roots gave him a head start in the party as it then was, and he was soon appointed secretary to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing at first hand the latter's hopeless attempts to stave off World War II. He lost his parliamentary seat in the Khaki Election of 1945, but regained it in 1950, being forced to resign it again in 1951, when he became 14th Earl of Home (normally known simply as "Lord Home") and enter the House of Lords. Home became Foreign Secretary in 1960. In 1962, he was created a knight of the Order of the Thistle, which, in the event, entitled him to be styled "Sir" after renouncing his earldom.

In 1963, when the Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, suddenly resigned as an indirect result of the Profumo scandal, Lord Home, by a murky process the details of which were not clear, was chosen to succeed him despite the support of a majority of the party for Deputy Prime Minister Richard Austen Butler. Lord Home renounced his peerage (under the Peerage Act 1963 passed earlier in the same year) in order to be qualified to re-enter parliament as an MP (which he did by winning the 1963 by-election for the constituency of Kinross) and take on the leadership, becoming Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The government had been too badly damaged to survive, however, and the general election of October, 1964, was won by the Labour Party. Home remained leader of the party until his resignation in July of the following year. The resulting leadership election was won by Edward Heath who defeated Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. Over the course of the following six years Home was notably loyal to Heath, comparing those who questioned his position with impatient gardeners who would keep digging up a tree to gauge its progress by examining its roots. When, in 1970, Heath became prime minister, Home returned to the post of Foreign Secretary which was deemed to suit him so well.

In 1974, following the defeat of the Heath government by that of Harold Wilson, Home was restored to the House of Lords when he accepted a life peerage, and became known as Baron Home of the Hirsel (The Hirsel being his family seat in Berwickshire) for the rest of his life. On his death, he was succeeded as Earl of Home by his son, David.

Autobiography: The Way The Wind Blows (1976)