Thomas Henry Ashton, 4th Baron Ashton of Hyde (born 18 July 1958), is a British hereditary peer and former insurance broker who served as Chief Conservative Whip in the House of Lords and as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms from 2019 to 2022.
He serves as Master of the Horse to King Charles III.
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Education and career
Henry Ashton went to Eton College and Trinity College, Oxford. He was commissioned in the Royal Hussars, later becoming a Lieutenant in the Royal Wessex Yeomanry. Ashton worked as an insurance broker and held the position of chief executive officer at Berkshire Hathaway-owned Lloyd's firms Faraday Underwriting Ltd, and Faraday Reinsurance Co. Ltd, from 2005 until 2013. From 2010 to 2013 Lord Ashton was a member of the Council of Lloyd's.
Elected a representative hereditary peer in July 2011, Ashton began to sit in the House of Lords as a Conservative. In the July 2014 government reshuffle he was appointed a Lord-in-waiting and Whip in the Lords by Prime Minister David Cameron, serving until the 2017 general election. In July 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.
In March 2019, Lord Ashton received international publicity and acclaim for giving a correct and clever definition to Lord Geddes, to the latter's question about the meaning of the term algorithm. Lord Ashton gave the definition as "an algorithm is a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations". The definition was said to "[rival] dictionary entries for clarity and succinctness—wrapped up in a historical allusion that he knew his classically educated interlocutor would understand."