ELLETSON, Harold Daniel Hope 1960-2023

233 views

Skip to first unread message

Richard R

unread,

Jun 30, 2023, 3:34:23 AM6/30/23

to Peerage News

He was s of Wing-Cmdr Daniel Hope ELLETSON RAFVR 1907-84 (who he succ as) head of that gentry family of Parrox Hall, and Coral Violet 1925-2004 d of Col Harold PEAKE COTTAM 1893-1974 of Linden Hall, Jersey CI and by his c1920 m reg Q1 Lancs to his 1^st w Rose Hannah BALL 1900-31. He m 1987 (div 2007) Fiona Margaret d of Ian FERGUSON of Duesseldorf, German, and had two sons Alexander Daniel H. b 1991 reg Q2 Lancs (who succeeds his f as family head) and George William F. b 1997 reg Q3 Lancs.

Obit in the Times of 30 June 2023:

E X T R A C T

Harold Elletson obituary

Quirky Conservative MP for Blackpool North who allegedly acted as an MI6 agent while sitting in the House of Commons

Harold Elletson’s five years as a Conservative MP in the 1990s were memorable for several reasons. He was a brilliant mimic who liked to trick backbench colleagues by impersonating ministers on the telephone. He once cast a vote while dressed in an England football shirt during the 1996 European championships. And he was famously accused of acting as an agent for MI6…

… Elletson denied assisting MI6 (although it would not have been illegal), calling it “schoolboy fiction”. His political colleagues suspected it was true, as did his younger brother, Chandos, a cookery writer. “It fits,” he said after pointing out that their father had been an intelligence officer during the war. “I asked him about it often, and he just smiled at me.”

Harold Daniel Hope Elletson was born in Blackpool in 1960, the older son of Coral and Daniel, a lawyer and country squire who owned Parrox Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in Preesall, Lancashire, and an estate of several hundred acres on the edge of Morecambe Bay…

… His other passion was politics, having been brought up in a house to which senior Tory figures such as Lord Hailsham and Lord Boyd-Carpenter were regular visitors. His father died when he was 23, and he won the ensuing by-election in order to inherit his seat on Lancashire county council.

In 1987 Elletson married Fiona Ferguson. They had two sons: Alexander, a sanctions adviser to a major bank; and George, an English language teacher. The couple divorced in 2007…

… In 1992 he fought and won Blackpool North for the Conservatives. Elletson was a popular member of parliament, with a keen sense of humour and dislike of pomposity. He was a favourite of Betty Boothroyd, then the Speaker, who would invite him to dinner parties to entertain guests with his impersonations of leading politicians…

… Over the past two decades he spent much time in Berlin with his partner, Rebecca Stromeyer, a German-Australian businesswoman, with whom he promoted e-learning in Africa.

Maintaining his beloved Parrox Hall in Preesall was his other preoccupation. He opened the grade II* listed building to the public, and, having no airs or graces, would show tour groups around himself…

Harold Elletson, former Conservative MP, was born on December 8, 1960. He died of a pulmonary embolism on June 23, 2023, aged 62