His father, Andrew Kerr, and grandfather,
Lord Walter Kerr, the son of the
7th Marquess of Lothian, were officers in the
Royal Navy. He was educated at
Ampleforth College and
Christ Church, Oxford, and joined the
Scots Guards. He succeeded his cousin,
Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, in 1940, and married a distant cousin,
Antonella Newland (d. 2007), daughter of
Major General Sir Foster Newland, on 30 April 1943. Lord and Lady Lothian had six children: two sons and four daughters. His wife pursued her own career as a journalist, and founded the
Women of the Year Lunch. The family were mainly based at their estates in the Borders, at
Newbattle Abbey and
Monteviot. The 11th Marquess had left
Blickling Hall in Norfolk to the
National Trust. Another family house at
Melbourne Hall in
Derbyshire was opened to the paying public in 1952. Lothian took part in the
Wolfenden inquiry into the UK's laws on
homosexuality and
prostitution from 1954. He joined the UK's delegation to the
United Nations General Assembly during the
Suez Crisis in 1956, and was later sent as a delegate to the
Council of Europe in 1959 and the
Western European Union. He served as
parliamentary private secretary to the
foreign secretary,
Lord Home, from 1960, and was also a whip in the House of Lords. He served as a junior minister at the
Ministry of Health during the short period of Lord Home's term as
prime minister in 1964. He returned to the Foreign Office with Alec Douglas-Home (then formerly Lord Home) in 1970, serving as parliamentary under-secretary for two years. He was nominated as a
member of the European Parliament in 1973, when the UK joined the
European Economic Community. Lord Lothian retired from politics in 1977, after which he served as
Lord Warden of the Stannaries, Keeper of the Privy Purse to the Duke of Cornwall, and Chairman of the Prince's Council for the
Duchy of Cornwall. He was appointed KCVO in 1983. He was also a member of the
Royal Company of Archers, commandant of the
Special Constabulary in the
Scottish Borders, and a
Knight of Malta. He returned the
Franciscan monastery of
San Damiano, near
Assisi, to the
Franciscan Friars Minor in 1979, and he ceded control of Monteviot and Melbourne House to his elder and younger son, respectively, in the 1980s, to take on the restoration of
Ferniehirst Castle in
Roxburghshire. ==Family==