Ronald Collet Norman


Ronald Collet Norman JP was a banker, administrator and politician.
He was chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC from 1935 to 1939 and of the London County Council from 1918 to 1919.

Biography

Norman was the son of Frederick Norman of the Norman family, long prominent in banking. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge.
In March 1900, he was appointed an assistant private secretary to the Under-Secretary of State for War, George Wyndham.
In 1907 he was elected to the London County Council as a Municipal Reformer. From 1918-1919 he served as chairman and was an Alderman of the council from 1922-1934. He served as the vice-chairman of the National Trust during the 1930s, but he declined the chairmanship, because he was not "a great landowner". He placed the Trust's finance committee on a more professional footing; it subsequently fell to his son Mark Norman to chair that committee through the difficult economic circumstances of the 1970s. From 1933 to 1935 he served as vice-chairman of the BBC, and was chairman from 1935 to April, 1939.

Descendants

Norman married Lady Florence Sibell Bridgeman, a daughter of the 4th Earl of Bradford. They had three sons and one daughter:
  1. Brigadier Hugh Norman ; father of
  2. #Patricia Norman, former wife of Henry Colum Crichton-Stuart and now wife of the 3rd Baron Kindersley;
  3. Mark Norman, a successful merchant banker;
  4. # David Norman
  5. ## Isabella Julia Norman is married to Timothy Nicholas Sean Knatchbull, a descendant of Queen Victoria through her great-grandson Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
  6. Sibyl Margaret Norman who married 1stly Archibald Edward Cubitt ; they had issue 1 son and 1 surviving daughter.
  7. # Robin Cubitt, who was father of three sons, including
  8. ## Mark Edward Cubitt, heir presumptive to the barony of Ashcombe.
  9. # Priscilla Cubitt is the third wife of the 11th Earl of Harrington, and they are parents of
  10. ## Lady Isabella Stanhope, wife of the 7th Earl Cawdor.
  11. Richard Norman who married an Anglo-Spanish aristocrat, descended from the Bourbon duques de Marchena themselves descended morganatically from Spanish kings.

    Family connections

Through the Bridgemans, the Normans descended from Ronald Collet Norman and Lady Florence are thus related to several prominent English and Scottish aristocrats including the Duke of Gloucester, the 7th Marquess of Salisbury, the 9th Duke of Buccleuch, and so forth.
His brother Montagu Norman, became a long serving Governor of the Bank of England and was elevated to the peerage as the 1st Baron Norman. Both their grandfathers were directors.