Elspeth Howe, Baroness Howe of Idlicote
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Elspeth Rosamund Morton Howe, Baroness Howe of Idlicote CBE (born Elspeth Rosamund Morton Shand, 8 February 1932) is a British Crossbencher life peer who has served in many capacities in public life. As the wife of Geoffrey Howe, she can also be known as Lady Howe of Aberavon.
She is the daughter of the writer Philip Morton Shand by his fourth wife Sybil Mary Shand (née Sisson). As such, she is an aunt of the half-blood to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (née Shand, formely Parker Bowles), whose father Bruce Shand was son of P. Morton Shand by a previous marriage. Elspeth Shand was well-educated for her times, studying at Wycombe Abbey, a leading private school for girls in the United Kingdom. She married the rising politician Geoffrey Howe in 1953, and had one son and two daughters.
Elspeth Howe served as deputy chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1979, and in various other capacities from 1980. She was later made Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission. In 2001, at the age of 69, she was made a life peer, as Baroness Howe of Idlicote, of Shipston-on-Stour in the County of Warwickshire, in her own right, becoming one of the first People's Peers. As a result of her husband having received a knighthood and later a peerage, and she herself subsequently being made a peer in her own right, she is now three times a lady - going from Mrs Geoffrey Howe to Lady Howe, to The Lady Howe of Aberavon, to The Baroness Howe of Idlicote.
