[3] He was educated at Geelong Grammar School, Australia and Christ Church, Oxford.
General Gwyn Venables Hordern CB, CMG, JP.
Andrew Roth's Parliamentary Profiles (1987–1991) describes him as "Widely respected, well-connected, principled Rightwing, monetarist City gent; a hard-headed long term thinker; a devout believer in sanctity of tight money" and as saying "I was not only one of the first in this House to be a monetarist...I confidently expect to be about the last."
Ahead of the high inflation of the mid-1970s, he attacked (with some prescience) the Bank of England in 1970 for insufficient monetary restraint and (while Chairman of the Finance Committee) both publicly opposed Chancellor Anthony Barber's over-expansion of monetary supply in April 1971 and attacked the Heath Government's "absurd" proposals for a statutory prices and incomes policy.
He was appointed a director of F&C Smaller Companies Investment Trust, plc in 1978, and as chairman in 1986.