Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar

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Ian Hedworth John Little Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, PC (b. 8 July 1926), is a former Conservative politician in the United Kingdom. From 1977 until 1992, he was styled Sir Ian Gilmour 3rd Baronet, having succeeded to his father's baronetcy.

Gilmour was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. He served with the Grenadier Guards 1944-47. He was a journalist and barrister, called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1952. He was proprietor of The Spectator and its editor 1954-59. Gilmour sold The Spectator to the businessman Harold Creighton in 1967.

He was was elected as Member of Parliament for Central Norfolk in a by-election in 1962. He held this seat until 1974 when his seat was abolished due to boundary changes, and he stood for the safe Conservative seat of Chesham and Amersham, sitting as its MP from 1974 until his retirement in 1992.

He served in Edward Heath's Cabinet as Defence Secretary and under Margaret Thatcher as Lord Privy Seal from 1979, as the chief Government spokesman in the House of Commons for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs working to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, who sat in the House of Lords. He did not have good relations with Thatcher, and was sacked in 1981. In 1989, he was considered by discontented backbenchers as a possible future leader. However, he did not participate in frontline British politics again, and was given a life peerage as Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, of Craigmillar in the District of the City of Edinburgh in 1992, of which his family were, for several hundred years, the feudal superiors.

Gilmour is known for writing coherently from the One Nation perspective of the Conservative Party, in opposition to Thatcherism; in particular in his books Dancing with Dogma and Whatever Happened to the Tories and in his critical articles in journals such as the London Review of Books. Inside Right (1977) is an introduction to conservative thought and thinkers. He is a pro-European.

On 10 July 1951, Gilmour married Lady Caroline Margaret Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Buccleuch; they have five children the eldest of which, the Hon. David Robert Gilmour, is heir presumptive to his father's baronetcy.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Richard Collard	Member of Parliament for Central Norfolk 1962–1974	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Chesham and Amersham 1974–1992	Succeeded by Cheryl Gillan
Political offices
Preceded by Lord Carrington	Secretary of State for Defence 1974	Succeeded by Roy Mason
Preceded by Lord Peart	Lord Privy Seal 1979–1981	Succeeded by Humphrey Atkins
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Little Gilmour	Baronet (of Liberton) 1977 – present	Incumbent