Death of Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
David Beamish
sven_me...@web.de
David Beamish
colinp
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, Conservative politician and Northern Ireland Secretary noted for his decency – obituary
Brooke was an active churchman and devoted to cricket (a ‘walking Wisden’), but his old-world courtesy and concern for others marked him out
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who has died aged 89, was a gentlemanly asset to the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, notably as Northern Ireland Secretary; he also served as Conservative Party chairman and National Heritage Secretary.
Under Peter Brooke’s aegis – with Mrs Thatcher still in office – “back-channel” contacts with Republicans were opened that led eventually to IRA ceasefires, talks with Sinn Fein, the Good Friday Agreement and power-sharing between Unionists and Republicans….
He had strong ties with Ulster. His family had moved to Co Monaghan from Cheshire in the 16th century, becoming powerful within the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. His cousins were the Brookes of Fermanagh, one of them Northern Ireland’s longest-serving premier.
Politics was, for him, only part of a much fuller life. He was devoted to his first wife Joan, and devastated by her death during a routine operation in 1985. He was an active churchman, serving as a lay adviser to St Paul’s Cathedral, and the last Cabinet minister to resist Sunday trading….
Peter Leonard Brooke was born on March 3 1934 into a home steeped in politics. His father Henry Brooke, later Lord Brooke of Cumnor, became an MP when Peter was four, and Home Secretary under Macmillan and Home. His mother, Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte, was a party vice-chairman….
Appointed a privy counsellor at the start of 1988,……
The day after the 1992 election, which the IRA marked with bombings in the City of London, Brooke left the government, becoming a Companion of Honour….
[He] served on the British-Irish Parliamentary Body. He continued on the latter after leaving the Commons in 2001 with a life peerage, and from 2004 to 2006 chaired the Association of Conservative Peers. He retired from the Lords in 2015….
Peter Brooke married Joan Smith in 1964, initially by proxy to clear bureaucratic delays, as her family lived in Brazil and she wanted to enter Britain as his wife; her cousin stood in for Brooke at the ceremony in São Paulo and Brooke arrived in Brazil soon afterwards with his father (then Home Secretary), on the last plane to come into the country before the “Coup of 64”. He married, secondly, in 1991, Lindsay Allinson, who survives him with three sons from his first marriage; a fourth died in infancy.
Peter Brooke, born March 3 1934, died May 13 2023
