Christopher Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat

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Christopher Samuel Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat (born 23 February 1937 London) is a British Conservative politician, businessman, company director and chairman, and journalist/author. His family lineage includes Jewish Austrian and Anglo-Irish extraction. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Tugendhat's father, Georg Tugendhat was born in Vienna but came to United Kingdom after World War I to pursue his doctorate at the LSE. He subsequently traced his father's forebears to the Polish town of Bielsko, Silesia which until 1918 had been called Bielitz when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He found the graves of 25 Tugendhats in the Jewish Cemetery which had closed in 1939. He helped to fund its restoration.

He was a journalist on the Financial Times from 1960 through to 1970. From 1970 to 1976 he sat as the Conservative M.P. for London and Westminster, before being appointed as a member of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981 and then Vice-President till 1985. He was appointed to the Commission by the Labour government over Margaret Thatcher's nominee John Davies, but she reappointed him in 1981.

Following which he became Chairman of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) from 1986 to 1995, and of the Civil Aviation Authority from 1986 to 1991 when he was succeeded by Christopher Chataway. He later went on to become the chairman of Abbey National and Blue Circle and later Chairman of the European Advisory Board of Lehman Brothers. He was also a Director of Rio Tinto and Eurotunnel, among others.

He was knighted in 1991 and was created a life peer as Baron Tugendhat, of Widdington in the County of Essex in 1993, and is the Chancellor of the University of Bath in Bath, England. He is married to Julia Dobson and has two sons, James Tugendhat (1971) and Angus Tugendhat (1974).

He is Chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the UK's first academic health science centre.

[edit] Publications

• Oil: The Biggest Business (1968)
• Multinationals (1971) London. Eyre and Spottiswoode
• Making Sense of Europe (1986) London. Viking
• Options for British Foreign Policy in the 1990's (Chatham House Papers) by Christopher Tugendhat and William Wallace (Nov 1988)
• Roy Jenkins A Retrospective (2004) Contributor, wrote Chapter 12.

[edit] External links

• Prospect article

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Smith	Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster 1970–1974	Succeeded by (constituency renamed)
Preceded by (new constituency name)	Member of Parliament for the City of London and Westminster South 1974–1977	Succeeded by Peter Brooke
Academic offices
Preceded by Sir Denys Henderson	Chancellor of the University of Bath 1998–	Succeeded by Incumbent