16 Facts About Harry Crookshank

Harry Crookshank was Minister of Health between 1951 and 1952 and Leader of the House of Commons between 1951 and 1955.

Harry Crookshank was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Harry Crookshank was awarded by Serbia the Order of the White Eagle and Gold Medal for Valour.

Harry Crookshank joined the Diplomatic Service in 1919 and worked at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, until 1924.

Harry Crookshank was elected Member of Parliament for Gainsborough in 1924, a seat he held for the next 32 years.

Harry Crookshank entered the government as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1934 under Ramsay MacDonald.

When Stanley Baldwin became prime minister in 1935 Harry Crookshank was appointed Secretary for Mines, a post he retained when Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937 until February 1939.

Harry Crookshank called Chamberlain "crazed and hypnotised by a loony" to have accepted the Munich Agreement and sent a letter of resignation in protest, but was convinced to rescind it.

Harry Crookshank continued in this post when Winston Churchill came to power in 1940, and was then Postmaster General under Churchill between 1943 and 1945.

Harry Crookshank continued in these two positions until December 1955, the last year under the premiership of Sir Anthony Eden.

Harry Crookshank retired from the House of Commons in 1956 and was raised to the peerage as the Viscount Crookshank, of Gainsborough in the County of Lincoln, in January of that year.

Harry Crookshank had been offered a peerage in February 1940 but declined, having considered it at the time an insult because his First World War wounds had left him incapable of fathering any heir to a title.

Lord Harry Crookshank was a Scottish Rite Freemason and Grand Master of Lincolnshire.

Incapable as result of his First World War wounds of fathering children, Harry Crookshank was a lifelong bachelor.

Harry Crookshank was known as a homosexual and caused a near scandal when a male lover of his was adopted as Conservative Party candidate for the Grimsby constituency in 1958 but later withdrawn.

Harry Crookshank died of cancer at Chelsea, London, in October 1961, aged 68.