Christopher Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat

Christopher Samuel Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat (born 23 February 1937 London) is a British politician belonging to the Conservative party, businessman, company director and chairman, journalist and author.

Family background

His family lineage includes Jewish Austrian (paternal) and Anglo-Irish (maternal) extraction; he was raised as a Roman Catholic. Tugendhat's father, Dr Georg Tugendhat was born in Vienna, but came to United Kingdom after World War I to pursue his doctorate at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he married Christopher's mother, Maire (Littledale). Georg Tugendhat traced his paternal forebears to the Polish town of Bielsko, Silesia which until 1918 had been called Bielitz, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He found the graves of 25 Tugendhats in the Jewish Cemetery which had closed in 1939. He helped to fund its restoration.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Christopher Tugendhat attended Ampleforth College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He became a journalist on the Financial Times from 1960 through to 1970. From 1970 to 1976 he sat as the Conservative M.P. for London and Westminster, before being appointed as a member of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981 and then Vice-President till 1985. He was appointed to the Commission by the Labour government over Margaret Thatcher's nominee John Davies, but she reappointed him in 1981.

On 3 December 1980, when driving away from his home in Brussels, two bullets were fired at him from a car, narrowly missing him; Tugendhat called the attack "closer than I would have liked." The Provisional IRA belatedly claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt.

Following his role at the Commission he became Chairman of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) from 1986 to 1995, and of the Civil Aviation Authority from 1986 to 1991 when he was succeeded by Christopher Chataway. He later went on to become the chairman of Abbey National and Blue Circle and later Chairman of the European Advisory Board of Lehman Brothers. He was also a Director of Rio Tinto and Eurotunnel, among others.

Honours

He was knighted in 1991 and was created a life peer as Baron Tugendhat, of Widdington in the County of Essex in 1993, and is the Chancellor of the University of Bath. He is Chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the UK's first academic health science centre.

He was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Bath (Doctor of Laws) in 1998.

Personal

He married Julia Lissant Dobson; they have two sons, James (born 1971) and Angus (born 1974). His younger brother, Michael, is a British High Court Judge.

Publications

• Oil: The Biggest Business (1968)
• Multinationals (1971) London. Eyre and Spottiswoode
• Making Sense of Europe (1986) London. Viking
• Options for British Foreign Policy in the 1990s (Chatham House Papers) by Christopher Tugendhat and William Wallace (Nov 1988)
• Roy Jenkins, a Retrospective (2004); contributor, wrote Chapter 12.

External links

• Hansard: Christopher Tugendhat's contributions in Parliament
• Prospect article

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Smith	Member of Parliament for Cities of London and Westminster 1970–Feb 1974	Succeeded by constituency abolished
Preceded by new constituency	Member of Parliament for City of London and Westminster South Feb 1974–1977	Succeeded by Peter Brooke
Political offices
Preceded by Wilhelm Haferkamp	European Commissioner for Budget and Financial Control and Financial Institutions 1977–1985	Succeeded by Henning Christophersen
Preceded by François-Xavier Ortoli	Vice-President of the European Commission 1981–1985	Succeeded by Frans Andriessen
Academic offices
Preceded by Sir Denys Henderson	Chancellor of the University of Bath 1998–	Succeeded by Incumbent