UK politician Norman St John-Stevas dies at 82
Mar 5, 2012, 5:03 PM
Associated Press
LONDON (AP) – Norman St John-Stevas, a politician noted for his wit, his extravagance, and for falling foul of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has died at age 82.
His family announced Monday that he died on Friday after a short illness.
Beyond the affectations, which included writing in purple ink and lapsing into Latin, he was a lawyer, an expert on Britain’s unwritten constitution, a former Cabinet minister, former chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission, master of a Cambridge college, and advocate of the canonization of Princess Grace of Monaco.
He was elevated to the House of Lords in 1987, taking the title Lord St John of Fawsley.
“Because I am burdened with a capacity for wit, people have sometimes had the impression that I am not serious in my approach,” he once lamented. “Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
St John-Stevas first served as a Cabinet minister in the waning months of Prime Minister Edward Heath’s administration, and returned following the Conservative victory in 1979 in Thatcher’s first Cabinet.
He didn’t last long, ejected in 1981 along with other moderate “wets” deemed insufficiently devoted to her policies.
He reportedly referred to Thatcher as “the Leaderene,” “the Blessed Margaret” and “Tina,” the last being an acronym for her slogan: “there is no alternative.”
During his time in the Cabinet, however, he made a lasting contribution to British governance by reorganizing the select committees in Parliament to review the government’s performance. Those committees are still growing in influence.
“For all the eccentricity of his lifestyle, his politics were very sound, very civilized, very mainstream and he was a very, very nice guy,” said Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke. “I shall miss him a lot.”
Born May 18, 1929, St John-Stevas earned a first-class law degree at Cambridge University, a masters at Oxford and a doctorate at London University. He was president of the Cambridge Union and later secretary of the Oxford Union, the first man to hold office in both debating societies.
He edited the complete works of Walter Bagehot, revered as the greatest expert on the constitution; his own books included “Life, Death and the Law: Law and Christian Morals in England and the United States,” “Agonizing Choice: Birth Control, Religion and the Law,” and “Pope John Paul II: His Travels and Mission.”
He also served as adviser on arts, cultural and constitutional matters to British Sky Broadcasting chairman James Murdoch and chief executive Jeremy Darroch.
St John-Stevas was elected to the House of Commons in 1964 and remained a member until 1987.
As news of St John-Stevas’ death spread, his eccentricities were fondly recalled.
David Hughes, chief editorial writer for The Daily Telegraph, said he once went to St John-Stevas’ home to do an interview, to be greeted by his host in “a full-length velvet dressing gown and a cardinal’s cap.”
In a House of Lords debate in June, St John-Stevas digressed from the topic to discuss fashion, confessing a weakness for dressing well. He recalled that he once begged to leave early from a Cabinet meeting to prepared for an evening function.
Thatcher, he said, responded that she was going to the same function.
His riposte? “But Prime Minister, it takes me much longer to change than it does you.”
Michael Heseltine, who served with St John-Stevas in Thatcher’s first government, recalled him as “a one-off, a very unusual character.”
“He used to sit at the far end of the Cabinet table and it was quite frequent that there would be an eruption of laughter from that quarter at something he said,” Heseltine recalled.
“That used to annoy the prime minister but Norman had the great skill of being able to rephrase a joke to make it sound wholly innocuous.”
Funeral details were not immediately available.
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