LENNOX-BOYD, Hon Sir Mark Alexander 1943-2025
Richard R
From the Telegraph of 31 July 2025: LENNOX-BOYD The Hon Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd died on 24th July 2025 aged 82, after a short illness at home at Gresgarth. Loved dearly by his wife Arabella, daughter Patricia, stepdaughter Dominique and grandson Sebastian. Private funeral will be held on 9th August. Service of thanksgiving to be announced later.
He was yst s of 1st Viscount BOYD OF MERTON CH 1904-83 and Lady Patricia Florence Susan GUINNESS 1918-2001 d of 2nd Earl of IVEAGH 1874-1967 and Lady Gwendoline Florence Mary ONSLOW 1881-1966 d of 4th Earl of ONSLOW 1853-1911 and Hon Florence Coulston GARDNER -1934 d of 3rd Baron GARDNER 1810-83 and his 2nd wife the actress Julia Sarah Hayfield 1828-99 d of Edward F T FORTESCUE and Sarah Hayfield HARDY 1795-1870. He m 1974 as her 2nd h Arabella CBE b 1938 (Who's Who) d of Piero PARISI of Rome and Irene Diaz DELLA VITTORIA, and had a dau.
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Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd, modest and low-key Tory MP for Morecambe with impeccable connections
Trained at Mecas, the Foreign Office’s ‘spy school’ in the Lebanon, Lennox-Boyd was sympathetic to the aspirations of moderate Palestinians
Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd, who has died aged 82, was Conservative MP for Morecambe and its hinterland from 1979 to 1997, a junior Foreign Office minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and prior to that a Government whip and PPS to Mrs Thatcher until four months before her overthrow; he was also an authority on sundials.
Civilised and somewhat withdrawn, Lennox-Boyd was the go-to figure in Mrs Thatcher’s team as her supporters became increasingly concerned that her primacy was coming to an end. Up to July 1990, when she moved him to the FCO, he was being urged by Alan Clark and others on the Right to persuade her to take seriously the rising discontent on the Tory Left.
Once Lennox-Boyd had been replaced as her PPS by the complacent Peter Morrison, she was insulated from such warnings. Morrison, crucially, declined to put an increasingly agitated Clark through to the prime minister as Michael Heseltine’s challenge to her gathered pace, until it was too late.
Lennox-Boyd had impeccable connections. His father, Viscount Boyd of Merton, had been Colonial Secretary under Churchill, Eden and Macmillan; his mother was a Guinness. Colin Hughes in The Independent would describe him as “modest, discreet and rich enough not to be intimidatingly ambitious”; the same paper’s Colin Brown saw “a stooped, bespectacled man with the respectful demeanour of a pall-bearer” [….]
Mark Alexander Lennox-Boyd was born in London on May 4 1943, the third and youngest son of Alan Lennox-Boyd and his wife Lady Patricia Guinness, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Iveagh; his uncle by marriage was the diarist “Chips” Channon. His eldest brother was Simon Lennox-Boyd, the 2nd Viscount Boyd [….]
Lennox-Boyd had held Morecambe and Lunesdale with five-figure majorities through three elections, but in the Labour landslide of 1997 Geraldine Smith defeated him by 5,965 votes.
Out of the House, he took an increased role in the management of the network of Guinness family companies; his personal stake was then estimated at £80 million.
He was Prime Warden of the Fishmongers’ Company in 1998-99, later chairing its education and grants committee. He chaired the Georgian Group, and was a patron of Prisoners Abroad.
He was knighted in 1994.
Mark Lennox-Boyd married, in 1974, the Italian garden designer Arabella Lacloche (née Parisi), who as Arabella Lennox-Boyd went on to win the Gold Medal six times and Best in Show (1998) at the Chelsea Flower Show, as well as the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal.
Together they transformed the landscape around Gresgarth Hall in Lancashire, which they bought in 1978, with Mark Lennox-Boyd designing an innovative obelisk sundial by aid of computer which, he observed, “unlike most sundials, will tell the RIGHT time every day”. In their Italian house, he created a seven-metre high sundial which he believed might be the largest in existence […..]
He was a patron of the British Sundial Society and in 2005 he published Sundials: History, Art, People, Science (Frances Lincoln).
His wife survives him, with their daughter and a daughter from her previous marriage.
Mark Lennox-Boyd, born May 4 1943, died July 24 2025