Lionel Heald

Sir Lionel Frederick Heald, QC, PC, (7 August 1897 – 8 November 1981) was a British barrister and Conservative Party politician.

At the 1950 general election, Heald was elected as Member of Parliament for the Chertsey constituency in Surrey. He held the seat until his retirement at the 1970 general election.

Heald introduced the Common Informers Act 1951 as a Private Member's Bill.^[1]

Heald served as Attorney General in Winston Churchill's government from 1951 to 1954, and was made a Privy Counsellor in 1954. He helped Margaret Thatcher introduce the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, similar to a bill that he had proposed years earlier, in her maiden speech.

He married Flavia Forbes, the younger daughter of Lt. Col. James Stewart Forbes, on 9 April 1923, and was divorced from her in June 1928, on the grounds of her adultery with Capt. James Roy Notter Garton.

On 15 May 1929 he married Daphne Constance Price (daughter of Montagu W Price, Chairman of the London Stock Exchange). They lived at Chilworth Manor, Surrey.

Heald's daughter from his first marriage, Susan was one of the secretaries who typed the English versions of the German Instrument of Surrender at the conclusion of the Second World War. His daughter Elizabeth married Colonel George Lane in 1963.^[2]

A book on the Dardanelles Campaign (H. W. Nevinson) placed on eBay in July 2009 (eBay Item number: 300329057740) included handwritten loose leaf embossed headed with the Garrick Club about Heald, which included some of the following biographical points:

Dob 1897 Charterhouse, Christ Church (Ox) BA LLB Hons 1920 Served 1914-1919 Called to the Bar (M Temple) 1923 Bencher 1946 Counsel for Board of Trade 1931-37 Member of Board 1947 JP Surrey 1946 MP Chertsey 1950

References

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Lionel Heald