Evelyn Macleod, Baroness Macleod of Borve

Evelyn Hester "Eve" Macleod, Baroness Macleod of Borve (19 February, 1915–17 November, 1999) was a British public servant.

Born Evelyn Hester Blois, she was the eldest daughter of Revd. Gervase Blois (1881-1961) (rector of Hanbury, Worcestershire and youngest son of Sir John Blois, 8th Baronet) and his wife, Hester (youngest daughter of Herbert Pakington, 3rd Baron Hampton). She was educated at Lawnside boarding-school in Great Malvern, was presented as a debutante at court and played tennis for Worcestershire.

On 3 July, 1937, she married Mervyn Charles Mason (1907–1940), second son of Alwyne Mason of Foxley Manor, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. During World War II, she worked for the London ambulance service and her husband was a Lieutenant in the Pioneer Corps. In 1940, he was killed after his ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland and she later married the future politician, Iain Macleod.

In 1952, Macleod was struck by meningitis and polio and was subsequently paralysed in one leg, but managed to walk with the aid of sticks. When her husband was Secretary of State for the Colonies, she was involved in entertaining various conference delegates. She was a magistrate, founder chairwoman (later president) of the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends and co-founder of Crisis at Christmas in 1967. After her husband died in 1970, she accepted (on the recommendation of Edward Heath) a life peerage as Baroness Macleod of Borve, a title which her husband had said he would take if ever he were elevated to the Peerage. In the House of Lords, she spoke on penal policy, the defence of widow's pensions and in 1976, launched the National Association of Widows. From 1972-5 she was a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the first chairwoman of the National Gas Consumers' Council from 1972-7. She died in 1999 and was survived by her two children, Torquil and Diana.

ources

*David Goldsworthy, "Macleod, Iain Norman (1913–1970)", [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34788 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] , Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edition, May 2007, accessed 23 October, 2007