Hoare, Sir Samuel John Gurney, 1st Viscount Templewood of Chelsea 1880-1959
English Conservative politician

Born in London and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, he became an MP in 1910, and held Colonial Office appointments in Russia and Italy. He was Secretary of State for Air (1922-29), and as Secretary of State for India (1931-35), helped draft its constitution, and piloted the 1935 India Act through the Commons. As Foreign Secretary in 1935, he made a memorable speech to the League of Nations on collective security, but was criticized for his part in the Hoare-Laval Pact, by which large parts of Abyssinia were ceded to Italy, and resigned the following year. He was made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1936, and during World War II was Lord Privy Seal, Secretary of State for Air again, and ambassador to Spain. His strong opposition to capital punishment was argued in The Shadow of the Gallows (1952), and an autobiographical work entitled Nine Troubled Years was published in 1954.