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George Jellicoe 1940.
George Patrick John Rushworth Jellicoe,
2nd Earl Jellicoe, was born in Hatfield
in April 1918, the only son of Admiral
John Jellicoe, the commander of the
Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland.
Indeed, Churchill later remarked that
the Admiral was ‘the only man on
either side who could lose the war in a
single afternoon’. Much of the young
Jellicoe’s early childhood was in New
Zealand, where his father was governor-
general, before completing his education
at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. Although his father died in 1935, George was not allowed to take up his seat in the House of Lords until he came of age in April 1939. Joining one of the first wartime commissioning courses at Sandhurst, Jellicoe was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in March 1940.
His early war service was with No. 8 (Guards) Commando in the Middle East and later with the fledgling SAS, becoming commander of the Middle East SBS operating in the Adriatic. Ending the war as a local brigadier, he was awarded the DSO and MC, as well as three MiDs and two French awards.
Embarking on a career with the foreign service after the war, he served in Washington, Brussels and, in Baghdad, as a junior in the department run by traitors Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. In 1958, his affair with his mistress became common knowledge and his boss informed him, ‘You have a choice of ceasing your relationship with this lady or choosing another job’. Jellicoe duly resigned to become a director of his mother’s family shipping business but soon returned to the House of Lords, firstly as a cross-bencher and later as a Conservative. During the Macmillan government, he held several ministerial posts, including minister of defence for the Navy. From 1970 to 1973, he was a minister in the Heath government and the leader of the Concorde sales team. On a trip to Australia, the press wrote: ‘The Earl looks a rugged character...who speaks with a directness that appeals to Australians’. In 1970, he became one of the first people to be breathalysed; however, the loss of his licence coincided with his elevation to a post with a ministerial car and driver.
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