Anthony Royle, Baron Fanshawe of Richmond


Anthony Henry Fanshawe Royle, Baron Fanshawe of Richmond, KCMG was a British Conservative Party politician and businessman.
A son of Sir Lancelot Royle, a wealthy businessman, he was educated at Harrow and RMA Sandhurst. He joined the Life Guards and subsequently the SAS. He contracted polio on his way to Korea and was invalided back to UK and spent a year in an iron lung.
After recovering, his father provided funding for him to become a member of Lloyd's of London, building upon his start in 1948 with insurance broker Sedgwick Collins.
In the 1950s, Royle became President of the Western Area Young Conservatives. He unsuccessfully contested St Pancras North in the 1955 general election. As the Conservative candidate in the 1958 Torrington by-election, he failed to hold the usually safe seat.
At the 1959 general election, Royle was finally elected to the House of Commons, as the Member of Parliament for Richmond, Surrey. He held the seat until he retired at the 1983 general election. Royle was strongly pro-membership of the European Community.
He was a junior minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 1970 to 1974. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1974. He was invited to become Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher to reform the way the party recruited candidates. He was also responsible for the party's International office.
In 1974 his father passed on his boardroom seats at British Match Corporation, Brooke Bond Liebig and Wilkinson Sword. In 1980, he did not stand for parliament again. He was elevated to the House of Lords in 1983 as Baron Fanshawe of Richmond, of South Cerney in the County of Gloucestershire. He was a director of Westland Helicopters during the 1985 Westland affair, supporting Michael Heseltine's pro-Europe position rather than Margaret Thatcher.
He acted as an informal liaison from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Keenie Meenie Services, one of Britain's first private military companies formed by ex-SAS members.
He was Chairman of the Sedgwick Group PLC from 1993 to 1999.
He married the former Vogue model Shirley Worthington in 1957 and had two daughters, one of whom, Lucinda, is married to a Conservative hereditary peer, the Baron de Mauley.