Douglas-Home was the younger son of the Honourable Henry Douglas-Home from his first marriage to
Lady Margaret Spencer. His uncle was the former
British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home. He was a first cousin of
John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, father of
Diana, Princess of Wales. Born in London, he was educated at
Eton College (where he was a King's Scholar) and then went into the
British Army in 1956 in the
Royal Scots Greys. On leaving the Army he spent nine months in Canada, supporting himself by selling books and
encyclopaedias. He then served as
aide-de-camp to
Sir Evelyn Baring who was Governor of
Kenya, at the height of the Mau Mau insurgency. During that year (1958–9) Douglas-Home found his taste for international politics. He later wrote the biography
Evelyn Baring: the Last Proconsul (1978). When he returned to the UK he wanted to work in
television but was quickly rejected because his accent and approach appeared wrong and he had no journalistic training. This led him to go into newspapers and he worked on the
Scottish Daily Express covering breaking news. Douglas-Home found the work dull and was about to resign when the paper's proprietor, Beaverbrook Newspapers, promoted him to be the deputy to
Chapman Pincher, the respected Defence correspondent of the
Daily Express in
London. This job was fascinating to Douglas-Home, and confirmed him in his career. Through his family connections, Douglas-Home built a network of contacts through parliament and Whitehall. After eighteen months, Douglas-Home became the principal political and diplomatic correspondent of the
Express. However he disagreed with the paper's opposition to British entry to the
European Communities and with relief in 1965 was appointed to succeed
Alun Gwynne-Jones as
The Times defence correspondent. He covered the
Six Days War and the
Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. From 1970 he was features editor, and in 1973 he became home editor.
William Rees-Mogg was impressed with Douglas-Home's approach and made him foreign editor in 1978. He was a candidate for the editorship when
Rupert Murdoch took over the paper in 1981, but
Harold Evans was appointed instead with Douglas-Home as his deputy. However a year later Murdoch and Evans had a spectacular falling-out over
editorial independence, and Douglas-Home succeeded the latter as editor. He would edit
The Times from 1982 to his death in 1985. Douglas-Home stabilised the paper, which he had inherited in a parlous state in the wake of its year long closure as well as the shock of the Harold Evans dismissal., and then began a steady process of improvement. Under his leadership
The Times doubled its circulation to 500,000. Although firmly conservative in the editorial line of the paper's leaders, Douglas-Home was at the same time committed to the tradition of impartial news reporting. He continued to edit the paper with great courage through his long and painful illness. He died of
cancer at age 48, leaving a widow Jessica Violet Gwynne and two sons Tara (born 1969) and
Luke Douglas-Home (born 1971). He was succeeded as editor by
Charles Wilson. ==Memorial Trust Award==