Douglas Hurd

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Douglas Hurd" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Right Honourable The Lord Hurd of Westwell CH CBE PC
Hurd in 2013
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office 26 October 1989 – 5 July 1995
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher John Major
Preceded by	John Major
Succeeded by	Malcolm Rifkind
Home Secretary
In office 2 September 1985 – 26 October 1989
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Leon Brittan
Succeeded by	David Waddington
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
In office 27 September 1984 – 2 September 1985
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Jim Prior
Succeeded by	Tom King
Minister of State for the Home Office[1]
In office 9 June 1983 – 27 September 1984
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Patrick Mayhew
Succeeded by	Giles Shaw
Minister of State for Europe
In office 4 May 1979 – 9 June 1983
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Malcolm Rifkind
Parliamentary offices Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal Life peerage 13 June 1997 – 9 June 2016 Member of Parliament for Witney Mid Oxfordshire (Feb 1974–1983) In office 28 February 1974 – 8 April 1997 Preceded by Constituency established Succeeded by Shaun Woodward
Political Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 1970–1974
Prime Minister	Edward Heath
Preceded by	Marcia Falkender
Succeeded by	Marcia Falkender
Personal details
Born	Douglas Richard Hurd (1930-03-08) 8 March 1930 (age 94) Marlborough, Wiltshire, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouses	Tatiana Eyre ​ ​ (m. 1960; div. 1982)​ Judy Smart ​ ​ (m. 1982; died 2008)​
Children	5, including Nick
Parent(s)	Anthony Hurd Stephanie Frances Corner
Relatives	Sir Percy Hurd (grandfather)
Education	Eton College
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Signature

Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC (born 8 March 1930) is a British Conservative Party politician who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1995.^[2][3]

A career diplomat and political secretary to Prime Minister Edward Heath, Hurd first entered Parliament in February 1974 as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency (Witney from 1983). His first government post was as Minister for Europe from 1979 to 1983 (being that office's inaugural holder) and he served in several Cabinet roles from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984–85), Home Secretary (1985–89) and Foreign Secretary (1989–95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990, and retired from frontline politics during a Cabinet reshuffle in 1995.^[4]

In 1997, Hurd was elevated to the House of Lords and is one of the Conservative Party's most senior elder statesmen. He is a patron of the Tory Reform Group. He retired from the Lords in 2016.