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Antony Head 1926.
Antony Henry Head was born on 19th December 1906. Educated at Eton, he was commissioned from Sandhurst on 30th August 1926 into the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars. Later transferring to The Life Guards, he served throughout World War Two, finishing as a brigadier. In the London Gazette of 20th December 1940, he was awarded the MC for ‘gallant conduct in action with the enemy’.
Turning to politics after the end of the war in Europe, Head was elected as Conservative MP for Carshalton in the July 1945 general election. In 1951, when Winston Churchill swept to power for his second term of office, he made Head his secretary of state for war. In 1955, when Churchill stood down, the new prime minister, Anthony Eden, had sufficient faith in Head to initially keep him in post then elevate him to Minister for Defence in 1956, with a seat on the cabinet. One of his first tasks was to answer a parliamentary question on why a company of Sandhurst officer cadets had run amok after losing a hotly contested Sovereign’s Company competition. However, the Suez debacle brought about the resignation of Eden and, his successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, moved Duncan Sandys into the defence ministry.
Head resigned his seat in 1960 and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Head of Throope in Wiltshire. However, his public service was not over, and he became High Commissioner to Nigeria from 1960 to 1963. This period saw huge changes immediately after independence as the fledgling state found its feet and deployed troops to one of the first UN missions to the Congo in 1961. Clearly regarded as a safe pair of hands, Head later served as High Commissioner to Malaysia from 1963 to 1966, guiding that country through its first three years of independence. Elevated to GCMG, Head enjoyed a long and active retirement, dying on 29th March 1983.
Antony Head was one of a very select group of defence ministers who had served in the army and trained at Sandhurst. The others are Winston Churchill 1940–45, 1951–52; Earl Alexander of Tunis 1952–54; Lord Carrington 1970–74; and Ben Wallace 2019-23.
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