Lionel Heald


Sir Lionel Frederick Heald, QC, PC was a British barrister and Conservative Party politician.
Heald was born in Parrs Wood, Didsbury, Lancashire. He was educated at Charterhouse, then served in France and Italy during World War I in the Royal Engineers, and was awarded the Italian Bronze Medal of Military Valor. After demobilization, he went to Christ Church, Oxford as a Holford exhibitioner, reading literae humaniores and graduating with a BA in 1920.
He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1923. At the Bar, his pupil masters were Donald Somervell and Stafford Cripps. Heald was junior counsel to the Board of Trade from 1931 to 1937, when he was appointed King's Counsel. He was a St Pancras borough councillor from 1934 until 1937. During World War II he served with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and reached the rank of air commodore.
At the 1950 general election, Heald was elected as Member of Parliament for the Chertsey constituency in Surrey, having been previously defeated in St Pancras South West in the 1945 general election. He held the seat until his retirement at the 1970 general election.
Heald introduced the Common Informers Act 1951 as a Private Member's Bill.
Heald served as Attorney General in Winston Churchill's government from 1951 to 1954, receiving the customary knighthood upon appointment. He prosecuted John Christie and the poisoner Louisa May Merrifield in 1953. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1954. After his resignation as Attorney General he returned to the backbenches, and retired from the House of Commons in 1970. He helped Margaret Thatcher introduce the Public Bodies Act 1960, similar to a bill that he had proposed years earlier, in her maiden speech.

Family

Heald married Flavia Forbes, the younger daughter of Lt. Col. James Stewart Forbes and Lady Angela Forbes, on 9 April 1923, and was divorced from her in June 1928, on the grounds of her adultery with Captain James Roy Notter Garton.
On 15 May 1929 he married Daphne Constance Price, daughter of Montagu W. Price, Chairman of the London Stock Exchange and through her mother, a niece of Edith Villiers, Countess of Lytton. They lived at Chilworth Manor, Surrey. Lady Heald trained at the Queen's Nursing Institute prior to her marriage and from 1950 became vice-president of the Royal College of Nursing. She was chairman of the National Gardens Scheme from 1951 to 1979, and opened the gardens at Chilworth for fundraising events for Marie Curie Cancer Care and other medical charities. She was appointed CBE in 1976. Lady Heald died on 14 August 2004, aged 99.
Heald's daughter from his first marriage, Susan was one of the secretaries who typed the English versions of the German Instrument of Surrender at the conclusion of the Second World War. His daughter Elizabeth married Colonel George Lane in 1963.