KESWICK, Sir Henry Neville Lindley (1938-2024)
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As a young taipan in 1970s Hong Kong, Henry Keswick ran his business with a commanding style which won the respect of Chinese entrepreneurs
Sir Henry Keswick, who has died aged 86, was a youthful taipan of Jardine Matheson, his family’s Far Eastern trading house, and later, for four decades, its presiding spirit from London. He was also a benevolent proprietor of The Spectator magazine, though the political career that he hoped might follow did not transpire…..
Henry Neville Lindley Keswick, William [Jardine]’s great-grandson, was born in Shanghai on September 29 1938. He was the eldest of three sons of Sir William “Tony” Keswick, who combined his role as a resident director of Jardines with the chairmanship of the Municipal Council of Shanghai’s International Settlement, and was later a director of the Bank of England….
It was his cousin Tessa – then married to Lord Reay, but later to be Henry Keswick’s wife – who first suggested that he should buy The Spectator as a platform from which to launch a Westminster career. He called on the magazine’s then owner, Harry Creighton, and agreed to buy it for £75,000…..
Keswick had not been a regular Spectator reader, though one of its most celebrated columnists of an earlier era, the explorer Peter Fleming, was a frequent guest of the Keswicks in Scotland and in Shanghai. The new owner also knew little about the milieu of literary journalism in general: his first significant act was to appoint as editor Alexander Chancellor, a friend from Eton and Cambridge who was, by Keswick’s own account, the only journalist he knew.
Keswick’s mother Mary (daughter of the diplomat Sir Francis Lindley) was in fact Chancellor’s godmother, and Chancellor’s father, a former Reuters chief, had been a great friend of Keswick’s father. Alexander Chancellor, who had been working for ITN, was not even a committed Conservative, describing himself as “a floating voter”. But he turned out to be an inspired choice, creating an eclectic magazine which regained lost readers and attracted new ones…..
Henry Keswick’s country home was Oare House, a Georgian mansion near Marlborough in Wiltshire, where he and his wife commissioned a contemporary pavilion by the Chinese-American architect IM Pei. In the Keswick homeland of Dumfriesshire, Henry enjoyed the sporting life at Glenkiln, a wild domain inherited from his father with its collection of sculptures by Moore and Epstein in moorland settings; Henry Moore’s Standing Figure, valued at £3 million, was stolen from the estate in 2015.
He also owned and greatly improved an 18,000-acre grouse moor at Hunthill in Angus. For recreation in London, Keswick was a keen bridge player at the Portland Club.
In 1985 Henry Keswick married Tessa, Lady Reay – née Fraser, a daughter of the 17th Lord Lovat – who pursued her own political career as a special adviser to Kenneth Clarke and director of the Centre for Policy Studies. Keswick was a prominent donor to Conservative Party funds and the couple hosted elegant political gatherings at their London home in Smith Square; she died in 2022.
Sir Henry Keswick, born September 29 1938, died November 5 2024
