Francis Edward Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 8th Baron Thurlow, (9 March 1912 – 24 March 2013) was a British diplomat. He was the last surviving former British colonial governor of The Bahamas.
Thurlow was the second son of the Reverend Charles Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 6th Baron Thurlow, and a grandson of the Liberal politician Thomas Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 5th Baron Thurlow, who served as Paymaster General under William Ewart Gladstone. In 1971 he succeeded his elder brother, Henry Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 7th Baron Thurlow as 8th Baron Thurlow.
Contents
Biography
Thurlow was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated to Master of Arts (M.A.).
Thurlow was a civil servant at the Department of Agriculture in Scotland from 1935–37. Through the period of World War II (1939-1944), he was secretary at the High Commission of the United Kingdom, Wellington New Zealand, and at the High Commission of the United Kingdom, Ottawa Canada 1944–1945. He was Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1947 to 1949, then counselor to the High Commission of the United Kingdom, New Delhi, India from 1949 to 1952. He became advisor to the Governor of the Gold Coast in 1955; when that colony became independent as Ghana in 1957, he was appointed Britain's first Deputy High Commissioner there, moving on to become Deputy High Commissioner in Canada in 1959.
Thurlow served as High Commissioner to New Zealand from 1959 to 1963, as High Commissioner to Nigeria from 1963 to 1966, Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in 1964, and as Governor of The Bahamas from 1968 to 1972.
After retiring from the service, he was appointed chairman of the Institute of Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences in 1975.
Thurlow's younger identical twin brother Sir Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce, PC, was a Judge of the High Court of Justice and a Lord Justice of Appeal.
Personal life
On 11 August 1949, Thurlow married Yvonne Diana Aubyn Wilson (1917 - 1990), who became Baroness Thurlow. They had four children:
Roualeyn Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 9th Baron Thurlow, b. 1952
Hon. Diana Miranda Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, b. 1954
Hon. Aubyn Cecilia Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, b. 1958
Hon. Peter Torquil Francis Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 1962-1985
Death
Thurlow died in England at the age of 101.