Robert Boscawen

Too young for military service at the outbreak of the Second World War, Boscawen went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read mechanical science and took the special army engineering course.

However, on 4 September 1942, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards (with which members of his family had served since 1769, including his brothers George and Evelyn, who had been killed during the evacuation from Dunkirk), and his service number was 243507.

A week after Operation Market Garden had finished, he was awarded the Military Cross (MC) during the German counter offensive against the Nijmegen bridgehead.

Boscawen served during 1947 and 1948 in Hamburg, West Germany, with the British Red Cross civilian relief teams organised by his mother, Lady Falmouth, a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party.

From 1948, he spent two years with Shell Petroleum as a management trainee before joining the family-owned Cornish china clay business, Goonveen, at Rostowrack.

He supported the restoration of capital punishment and drastic cuts in the welfare state and student grants and opposed abortion.

He was also initially opposed to Britain's entry into the European Common Market but later tentatively supported it, warning opponents against using war memories to make decisions affecting future generations.