[1] A career soldier, Head was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars on 30 August 1926.

[1] He served as Secretary of State for War from 1951 to 1956 and as Minister of Defence (with a seat in the cabinet) from 1956 to 1957,[5] in the administrations of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.

He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1951 and in 1960 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Head, of Throope in the County of Wiltshire.

[8] Lord Head married Lady Dorothea Louise (1907–1987), daughter of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, on 23 July 1935.

[1] They had four children: Lord Head lived at Throope Manor in Bishopstone, Salisbury, and died there on 29 March 1983, aged 76.