Politician. The son of Great Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, he was a politician, and like his father, born at Lossiemouth in Morayshire, Scotland. He was educated at Bedales School in Hampshire and at Queen's College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. Although he was defeated in 1923 and 1924, in 1929, he was elected to the House of Commons, representing Bassetlaw, in Nottinghamshire. In 1931, he was one of only a few Labour members to join his father in the Coalition Government, where he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Dominions, later being promoted to Secretary of State for the Dominions and Colonies. Although he lost his parliamentary seat in the General Election of 1935, he was re-elected the following year, to represent Ross and Cromarty, where his Conservative opponent was Randolph Churchill, the son of Sir Winston. In 1940, he was appointed Minister of Health in Churchill's coalition government; and, the following year, as the British High Commissioner to Canada. Because he was unmarried, his sister, Sheila, served as his hostess; but, in 1946, he married a young Canadian war widow, named Audrey Rowley; they went on to have one daughter. At the General Election of 1945, he did not stand for Parliament and refused Attlee's offer of a post in his Government, becoming, instead, the Governor General of the Malay States and Singapore, then, from 1955 to 1960, the High Commissioner to India and, later, to Kenya. He once described himself as "Afro-Asian with a lot of Scottish blood." From 1970, he was Chancellor of the University of Durham, and was the author of several books on ornithology and travel. He died at his home near Sevenoaks in Kent, where he had gone outside on a frosty night to make sure that his greenhouse was closed, and suffered a heart attack.