Aidan Crawley

Aidan Merivale Crawley, MBE (10 April 1908 Benenden, Kent – 3 November 1993 Banbury, Oxfordshire)^[1] was a British journalist, television executive and editor, and politician. He was a member of both of Britain's major political parties: the Labour Party and Conservative Party, and was elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP from 1945 to 1951, and as a Conservative MP from 1962 to 1967.

Education

Crawley was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Oxford. He played cricket for Oxford University Cricket Club and Kent.

Life and career

The bulk of Crawley's cricket career was in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but he played a few first-class games after the Second World War, while a sitting MP.^[2]

He joined the Auxiliary Air Force in 1936, and was a trained fighter pilot at start of the Second World War. After serving on night patrols over the English Channel he was sent ostensibly as an assistant air attaché to Turkey in April 1940, cover for intelligence work in the Balkans in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, being smuggled out of Sofia when the Germans invaded the latter country in March 1941. Subsequently assigned to 73 Squadron in Egypt, he was shot down in July 1941 near besieged Tobruk and was taken prisoner of war. He remained in Germany, despite escape attempts, latterly at Stalag Luft III.^[3]

He was Labour Member of Parliament for Buckingham from 1945 to 1951, when he lost to the Conservative candidate Frank Markham, himself an ex-Labour MP. He was Under-Secretary of State for Air in Clement Attlee's Labour Government.

In 1955, he was the first editor-in-chief of Independent Television News and was responsible for introducing American-style newscasters to British media and pledged to transform television's attitudes to politicians.^[4] He left ITN after a row when the company tried to trim down the news operations and rejoined the BBC.^[5]

Having left the Labour Party in 1957,^[3] in 1962, he was elected to Parliament as a Conservative, winning the by-election in West Derbyshire. He held the seat through two general elections,^[6] before resigning in 1967 to become Chairman of London Weekend Television where he remained until 1973. He became President of the M.C.C. in 1972.

Crawley authored several books, including biographies of Konrad Adenauer and Charles De Gaulle.

• De Gaulle: A Biography (London: Collins, 1969)
• Escape from Germany 1939-1945
• Spoils of the War: The Rise of Western Germany 1945-1972
• Patterns of Government in Africa
• Leap before you look: a memoir, 1988.

Family

Aidan Crawley was the second son (of three sons and two daughters) of the Rev. (Arthur) Stafford Crawley, Canon of Windsor, himself the youngest son of a successful railway contractor, George Baden Crawley (1833–1879),^[7] and his wife Inez, who married as her second husband Rear-Admiral JE Pringle. His mother was the former Anstice Katherine Gibbs (usually known as Nancy),^[8] sixth of the ten children of Antony and Janet Gibbs of Tyntesfield, Somerset. Stafford Crawley was the brother-in-law of the Earl of Cavan who was first married to his sister Caroline Inez Crawley (dsp 1920). His own wife Nancy was related to the Lords Wraxall, of Tyntesfield and the Lords Aldenham and Hunsdon. Stafford Crawley was chaplain to the Archbishop at Bishopthorpe and later Canon of St George's Chapel, Windsor. The Crawleys had three sons and two daughters, of whom Aidan was the middle son. A daughter Anstice, Lady Goodman (see below), was also prominent in public life.^[9]

Marriage and issue

In 1945, he married the sometime war correspondent Virginia Cowles (24 August 1910 Brattleboro, Vermont-6 September 1983 near Biarritz in a car crash),^[10][11] daughter of the controversial^[12] society doctor, Edward Spencer Cowles MD.^[13] with whom he had 3 children.

However, Crawley suffered several tragedies. His wife died in 1983 in a road accident in France. Five years later, he lost both his sons in a plane crash (they were travelling together to their sister's 40th birthday party), leaving young children and widows who were seven months pregnant. He then lost heavily in the Lloyd's crash and at the time of his death, Crawley was virtually penniless.^[14]

He was survived by his daughter Harriet, his two widowed daughters-in-law and six grandchildren (two children from his elder son Andrew, three from his younger son Randall, and one from his daughter).

Children:

• Andrew Hayward Crawley (1947-11 September 1988^[15]); md 1986 Sarah Lawrence, and had issue, one son and a posthumous daughter.^[16] Andrew and Randall were killed when their private plane hit a mountain on the way to their sister's 40th birthday party.^[17]
• Randall Stafford Crawley (14 July 1950^[18] - 10 September 1988 Italy), who was married 3 November 1982 to Marita Georgina Phillips, now Mrs Andrew Knight (b. 28 May 1954), third daughter of Lt.-Col. Harold Pedro Joseph Phillips, by his wife Georgina Wernher, and sister of the Duchess of Abercorn and the Duchess of Westminster. Randall left issue, two sons (the younger Galen born after his death, and godson of HRH The Prince of Wales) and a daughter.^[19] His widow Marita, recently remarried in 2006 Andrew Knight (b. 1939), former journalist and editor.
• Harriet Spencer Crawley (b. 1948), a successful author and former television presenter of "Collecting Now", married firstly Gleb Chestekov in 1993. She married 2ndly circa 2001 Julian Ayer^[20] (1939-26 December 2004, died Galle, Sri Lanka in the Boxing Day Tsunami^[21]). Julian Ayer, whom she met in 1999, was the adoptive son of the philosopher Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, or "Freddie" Ayer (1910–1989). According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Julian was born the elder child of philosopher Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire (1914–2004) by (Grace Isabel) Renée Ayer, née Orde-Lees (d. 1980), who was Ayer's wife at the time. Hampshire married Renee in 1961, twenty years after her first husband divorced her. However, Ayer acknowledged the child Julian as his.^[22][23] They had no issue. Harriet also has issue one son
  • Spencer Henry Crawley now a promising cricketer ("Spencer Henry Crawley". espncricinfo.com. Retrieved August 2012.  Check date values in: |access-date= (help)).^[24][25][26]

Notable relatives

• Crawley's sister was Anstice, Lady Goodman (7 December 1911 - 4 January 2001), whose marriage to Sir Victor Goodman was childless.^[27]
• Crawley's niece Penelope Anstice Crawley (b. 1950) married 1971 Lord Guernsey, now 12th Earl of Aylesford (b. 1947), the heir to the 11th Earl of Aylesford and has issue, including one son. Her husband succeeded to the earldom on 12 February 2008, and her son is now styled Lord Guernsey. This is not the first notable marriage for a Crawley female; her great-aunt Caroline Inez Crawley (d. 1920, without issue) was first wife of Field Marshal the 10th Earl of Cavan.
• An ancestress Matilda Crawley-Boevey (1817–1877), of the Crawley-Boevey baronets married William Gibbs of Tyntesfield and Clyst St. George, and had issue, seven children, of whom four are listed in the Plantagenet Roll.^[28] Her granddaughter Anstice Katharine Gibbs married a Crawley cousin (Arthur Stafford Crawley) in 1903, and was mother of Aidan Merivale Crawley. Anstice's brother was 1st Baron Wraxall, while close relatives patrilineally were the Lords Aldenham and Hunsdon (now united as of 1939).

Notes

References

• Daily Telegraph, 14/06/67
• Parris, Matthew. "Crawley, Aidan Merivale (1908–1993)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51810.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Dixon, Ann Davenport (2004). "Cowles , (Harriet) Virginia Spencer (1910–1983)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/51487.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Photograph of Aidan Crawley down the page.
• Virginia Cowles, German Wikipedia (in German).
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
• Aidan Crawley from CricketArchive
• "After the flood: England witness a triumph of the spirit in Sri Lanka" The Independent, 18 December 2007. Describes Harriet Ayer's efforts to build a memorial to her husband, and relates some of the family tragedies.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Aidan Crawley
• Crawley ancestry can be found at the following sources:
  • the Plantagenet Roll: Clarence Volume
  • the 1895 issue of Debrett's Peerage (archived online).
  • Descendants of the Conqueror: Clarence 25. This shows all the descendants of the Crawley-Boevey baronets, starting with the 2nd Baronet and his brothers. Retrieved 10 December 2008.
• Rev. Arthur Stafford Crawley (1876-1948), Canon of Windsor, information in the National Archives.

Further reading

Aidan Crawley. Leap before you look: a memoir, (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 7 April 1988)