He lost his father to a road accident; in his maiden speech in 1928 in the House of Lords he called for mandatory driving tests.
In 1926 he was commissioned into the 21st (Royal Gloucestershire Hussars) Armoured Car Company of the Territorial Army; he was promoted lieutenant in 1929 and captain in 1938.
[2] Since he was nineteen, the law at the time required him to have his mother's consent to the marriage, which he knew he could not obtain due to his fiancée's association with the West End.
On 15 August 1935, Lord de Clifford was involved in a high-speed head-on collision which caused him injury and killed a 26-year-old driver in Surrey, Douglas George Hopkins, while driving his sports car on the wrong side of the road.
[3] When a jury in the coroner's court found unanimously that an 'accident involving others' was the cause of death, and that he had been well beyond the speed limit, the police charged him with a felony.
At first he was indicted and committed for trial at the Old Bailey, until it dawned on the courts that, as he was a peer of the realm, only the House of Lords could try him for a felony.
Since this had not occurred since 1901, when The 2nd Earl Russell was convicted of bigamy, the House set up a select committee to investigate the precedents and rules for such a proceeding.
[6] Having separated from his wife after the war, he divorced her in 1973 and married Mina Margaret, daughter of Mr G. E. Sands, the same year.