On reaching 18, he refused as a conscientious objector to take part in active combat, but joined the Royal Naval Reserve (trawler section).

[4] In 1937, new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave De La Warr his first cabinet post as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal.

[5] Like several other younger members of the cabinet, De La Warr found himself disagreeing over the government's foreign policy, and contemplated resigning over the Munich Agreement, but decided not to.

[6] During his time in this post, it was expected that he would oversee legislation for raising of the school leaving age to 15, but the outbreak of World War II deferred all such plans until the end of hostilities.

[3] Apart from his career in national politics, De La Warr was Mayor of Bexhill-on-Sea between 1932 and 1934 and a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Sussex.

He attended her marriage to Stewart Menzies, (leader of British wartime intelligence or 'C'), dressed in a lower-deck seaman's bell-bottomed uniform.

Lord De La Warr died in January 1976, aged 75, and was succeeded in the earldom by his elder and only surviving son, William.