Aidan Merivale CrawleyMBE (10 April 1908 – 3 November 1993)[1] was a British journalist, television executive and editor, and politician. He was a member of both of Britain's major political parties: the Labour Party and Conservative Party, and was elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP from 1945 to 1951, and as a Conservative MP from 1962 to 1967.
Education
Crawley was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Oxford.[2] He played cricket for both Harrow and for Oxford University Cricket Club. He scored 87 in the 1926 Eton v Harrow match at Lord's, an innings which Wisden described as "widely regarded as the best innings in the match for many year", and he was described in the same publication as a "beautiful player".[3] In 1928 he set a new record for runs scored in a season for Oxford with 1,137 runs scored, and in 1929 scored 204 against Northamptonshire.[3]
Life and career
Crawley had a varied career, playing first-class cricket, serving in the armed forces, acting as a Member of Parliament for two political parties, making documentary films and serving as the first chairman of London Weekend Television.
Crawley made his first-class cricket debut in May 1927, playing for Oxford University against Harlequins.[4] Later the same year he made his County Championship debut for Kent County Cricket Club against Worcestershire as an amateur cricketer.[4] The bulk of Crawley's first-class cricket career was in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He made at least ten first-class appearances in each year between 1927 and 1932[5] and made a total of 87 first-class appearances, the majority during this period.[2] He played a total of 39 times for Oxford and 33 for Kent as well as eight times for Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) as well as making a few appearances for other teams such as the Free Foresters.[6]
He joined the Auxiliary Air Force in 1936, and was a trained fighter pilot at start of the Second World War. After serving on night patrols over the English Channel he was sent ostensibly as an assistant air attaché to Turkey in April 1940, cover for intelligence work in the Balkans in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, being smuggled out of Sofia when the Germans invaded the latter country in March 1941. Subsequently, assigned to 73 Squadron in Egypt, he was shot down in July 1941 near besieged Tobruk and was taken prisoner of war. He remained in Germany, despite escape attempts, latterly at Stalag Luft III.[8]
In 1955, he was the first editor-in-chief of Independent Television News and was responsible for introducing American-style newscasters to British media and pledged to transform television's attitudes to politicians.[10] He left ITN after a row when the company tried to trim down the news operations and rejoined the BBC.[11]
Escape from Germany. A History of R.A.F. Escapes during the War (1956)
Spoils of the War: The Rise of Western Germany 1945-1972
Patterns of Government in Africa
Leap before you look: a memoir (1988).
Family
Crawley was the second son of the Rev. (Arthur) Stafford Crawley, Canon of Windsor, and the former Anstice Katherine Gibbs (usually known as Nancy),[12] sixth of the ten children of Antony and Janet Gibbs of Tyntesfield, Somerset. His paternal grandfather was George Baden Crawley (1833–1879), a successful railway contractor[13] and his wife Inez.
Stafford Crawley was the brother-in-law of the Earl of Cavan and Crawley's mother was related to the Lords Wraxall, of Tyntesfield and the Lords Aldenham and Hunsdon. Stafford Crawley was chaplain to the Archbishop of York at Bishopthorpe and later Canon of St George's Chapel, Windsor. The Crawleys had three sons and two daughters, of whom Aidan was the middle son. A daughter Anstice, Lady Goodman (see below), was also prominent in public life.[14]
Marriage and issue
In 1945, he married the sometime war correspondent Virginia Cowles (24 August 1910 – 6 September 1983),[15][16] daughter of the controversial[17] society doctor Edward Spencer Cowles MD,[18] with whom he had 3 children.
Crawley suffered several tragedies. His wife died in 1983 in a road accident near Biarritz in France. Five years later, he lost both his sons in a plane crash whilst they were travelling together to their sister's 40th birthday party, leaving young children and widows who were seven months pregnant.[19] He then lost heavily in the Lloyd's crash and at the time of his death, Crawley was virtually penniless.[20]
He was survived by his daughter Harriet, his two widowed daughters-in-law and six grandchildren:
Andrew Hayward Crawley (1947−1988[21]), married Sarah Lawrence in 1986 and had one son and a posthumous daughter.[22]
Randall Stafford Crawley (1950–1988),[23] who married Marita Georgina Phillips in 1982. Their two sons (the younger Galen born after his death) and a daughter.[24] His widow Marita remarried Andrew Knight in 2006.
Harriet Spencer Crawley (b. 1948), a successful author and former television presenter of Collecting Now, married Gleb Shestakov in 1993 and then Julian Ayer in around 2001.[25] Ayer, whom she met in 1999, was the adoptive son of the philosopher Sir Alfred Jules Ayer. They had no children although Harriet had one son in 1987: Harriet unsuccessfully fought the Brent East Constituency in the 1987 general election, she lost to Labour veteran Ken Livingstone.
Crawley's sister was Anstice, Lady Goodman (7 December 1911 – 4 January 2001), whose marriage to Sir Victor Goodman was childless.[30]
Crawley's niece Penelope Anstice Crawley (b. 1950) married 1971 Lord Guernsey, now 12th Earl of Aylesford (b. 1947), the heir to the 11th Earl of Aylesford and has issue, including one son. Her husband succeeded to the earldom on 12 February 2008, and her son is now styled Lord Guernsey. This is not the first notable marriage for a Crawley female; her great-aunt Caroline Inez Crawley (d. 1920, without issue) was first wife of Field Marshal the 10th Earl of Cavan.
An ancestress Matilda Crawley-Boevey (1817–1877), of the Crawley-Boevey baronets married William Gibbs of Tyntesfield and Clyst St. George, and had issue, seven children, of whom four are listed in the Plantagenet Roll.[31] Her granddaughter Anstice Katharine Gibbs married a Crawley cousin (Arthur Stafford Crawley) in 1903, and was mother of Aidan Merivale Crawley. Anstice's brother was 1st Baron Wraxall, while close relatives patrilineally were the Lords Aldenham and Hunsdon (now united as of 1939).
Notes
^Aidan Merivale Crawley entry in Cricinfo database online "Spencer Henry Crawley". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 1 August 2012..
^ abBishop, Edward (2002). The Daily Telegraph Book of Airmen's Obituaries. Grub Street. pp. 269–270. ISBN1-902304-99-3.
^Phillip Whitehead obituary in The Independent notes that he was defeated by the former Labourite, now Conservative, Aidan Crawley in 1966. "Whitehead's first attempt at Parliament was in the 1966 general election when as vice-chairman of the Young Fabian Group he was selected to take on Aidan Crawley in West Derbyshire. It was a particularly acrimonious campaign. Crawley was well known on the television screen and had been a much-favoured young minister in the Attlee government when he was a Labour MP for Buckingham, 1945-51, as Under-Secretary for Air. In 1957 he had resigned from the Labour Party and had been adopted as Conservative candidate in 1959. Crawley won by 18,383 votes to Whitehead's 13,791 with Mrs M.V. Edwards for the Liberals gaining 4,874." (Dalyell, Tam (3 January 2006). "Obituary: Phillip Whitehead: Television producer who made an effective second career as Labour MP and MEP". The Independent. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 1 August 2012.).
^He was descended from the younger brother of Sir Thomas Crawley-Boevey, 2nd Baronet (1744-1818), who inherited 1789 by special remainder as husband of the granddaughter of the first Baronet's brother, a rare remainder. The Crawley family itself was landed. The name of Crawley-Boevey dates to 1726, when the 2nd Baronet's grandfather Thomas Crawley (1709-1769) inherited Flaxley Abbey and changed his name from Crawley to Crawley-Boevey. However, the junior branches of his descendants used the name of Crawley alone.
^"Body & Mind Raid"Time magazine, 4 May 1942. In 1941, he was Director of the Park Avenue Hospital, New York; Director of the Body and Mind Foundation and of the Body and Mind Clinic, New York; Staff Physician and Psychiatrist to the Bloodgood Foundation, Johns Hopkins University; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Source: Amazon.
^Harriet Crawley loses her husband Julian Ayer, adoptive son of the philosopher Freddie Ayer, in the 2004 tsunami. (Telegraph staff (31 December 2004). "Ayer's adopted son dies". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 1 August 2012.)
^Lundy, Darryl. "Andrew Crawley". The Peerage.[unreliable source] says 11 September, other sources, notably the Harrow page, say 10 September. Retrieved 10 December 1988.
^Harriet Crawley speaks about the Crawley Gap Year Scholarships in memory of her brothers ("The Crawley Gap Year Scholarship". The Harrow Association. Retrieved 1 August 2012.).
^Telegraph staff (31 December 2004). "Ayer's adopted son dies". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
^Spencer Crawley's father is allegedly Douglas Percy Codrington Nation (1942-2001), father of Tanya Marie Nation, now married to the Marquess of Hamilton. Hamilton is the nephew of Harriet's sister-in-law Marita Crawley, nee Phillips.
^Marquis de Ruvigny de Raineval et al.Plantagenet Roll: Clarence Volume p. 150. Originally published: London : T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1905. Reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Com, 1994. Retrieved 10 December 2008
