Owen Lloyd George, 3rd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor


Owen Lloyd George, 3rd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, DL was a British Peer. He sat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.

Early life

Lord Lloyd-George was the son of Richard Lloyd George, 2nd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor and Roberta Ida Freeman McAlpine, the youngest daughter of Sir Robert McAlpine, 1st Baronet, the founder of the engineering company Sir Robert McAlpine. He was also the grandson of David Lloyd George, Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1916 and 1922, on whom the earldom was conferred at its creation in 1945.
Lloyd-George was educated at Oundle School, where he was featherweight boxing champion, but left before his 17th birthday to be apprenticed as a civil engineer to Sir Alfred McAlpine, 3rd Baronet.

Career

In 1942, Lloyd-George was commissioned into the Welsh Guards, where he gained the rank of Captain. In the Second World War, he fought with the 3rd Battalion in Italy between 1944 and 1945. After the war, he served with the 2nd Battalion in Germany.
On the death of his grandfather in March 1945, Lloyd-George experienced an imaginative gesture on the part of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who determined that all four of his old friend's grandsons in the services should be brought home to attend the funeral in north Wales. One was firing his guns across the Rhine, another was flying a bomber, a third was serving in HMS Enterprise in the North Sea and the fourth, Lloyd-George, was fighting in Italy. Lloyd-George was at once dispatched to Naples by fighter plane, given a bed in Field Marshal Alexander's villa, flown by bomber to England the next morning, whisked up to north Wales in a Spitfire and delivered at Llanystumdwy one hour before the funeral.
On the death of his father on 1 May 1968 he succeeded as Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor and became an active member in the House of Lords. He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant of Dyfed in 1993.

Marriages and children

Lloyd-George married first Ruth Margaret Coit on 8 September 1949, but they divorced in 1982. With Coit he had three children, two sons and one daughter:
  1. David Richard Owen Lloyd George, 4th Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
  2. Hon. Robert John Daniel Lloyd George
  3. Lady Julia Margaret Violet Lloyd George
He married secondly in 1982 to Josephine, Countess of Woolton, daughter of Sir Alexander Penrose Gordon-Cumming, 5th Baronet and Elizabeth, Countess Cawdor. It was her third marriage, and her third to a peer.

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