Thomas Cecil Skeffington-Lodge[1] (15 January 1905 – 23 February 1994)[2] was a British Labour Party politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bedford from 1945 to 1950.
He was from a Yorkshire farming family which owned 2,000 acres. His mother, Winifred Skeffington, was a suffragette and his father, Thomas Lodge, from the famous Lodge family, American and British.
The novelist Francis King came to grief in 1970with a novel entitled A Domestic Animal, a semi-autobiographical account of his affair with an Italian academic. The trouble came not from the ex-boyfriend, but from Tom Skeffington-Lodge, his next-door neighbour in the Montpelier area of Brighton.[3] It was his dream to be elevated to the House of Lords, and to this effect he petitioned the former Labour leader Clement Attlee to use his influence. Attlee returned the Delphic reply that he hoped Skeffington-Lodge would "get what he deserved" who then remarked to friends that his peerage was "in the bag". Francis King put these words into the mouth of a female character he called Dame Winifred Harcourt. Skeffington-Lodge however got the book withdrawn.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Richard Wells, Bt |
Member of Parliament for Bedford 1945 – 1950 |
Succeeded by Christopher Soames |