Sir Antony Buck

Times

October 11, 2003

Sir Antony Buck

House of Commons stalwart whose life turned colourful in his sixties when he married the second Lady Buck

IN SPITE of the solid if unexciting virtues that had made him a Navy minister in the Government of Edward Heath in the early 1970s and a respected Tory MP for Colchester for thirty years from 1961, Sir Antony Buck ended his life still, somehow, associated principally with the activities of his colourful Spanish second wife, Bienvenida Pérez-Blanco, whom he married in 1990. Her subsequent affair with Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Peter Harding resulted in that officer's retirement as Chief of the Defence Staff in 1994, as a result of an entrapment exercise by a newspaper in which she colluded and which provided details of their assignations in London hotels. Buck was always known among his close associates to have a busy extra-marital sex life while in the Commons - he claimed that his first wife did not like London - but nothing prepared his friends for the details that enthralled the tabloid newspapers for weeks.

True, the marriage of the 61-year-old groom to his glamorous 31-year-old bride in March 1990 had, even before it foundered, been the stuff of glossy magazine gossip pages, with Buck coyly going on record as having "misgivings" about the gap between their ages, while his new wife dissented from charges levelled at her by those of her own sex that she was marrying him for his money. Yet this charming prospect of January and May finding lifelong solace in each other's arms was to end in an atmosphere of recrimination.

The divorce action was accompanied by allegations that he had taken two years to consummate their union. Buck in his turn rebutted such aspersions with assurances that everything had been robustly normal about their marriage from the beginning.

Not long afterwards he married Tamara Norashkaryan, a 55-year-old former teacher at Moscow University, who arrived on his doorstep saying she had been attracted to him since she had seen his photograph in a Russian newspaper. Though he said at the time that he had very little money left after arranging to pay a substantial amount to his second wife, he still flew by Concorde with the third Lady Buck to High Moon in Barbados, saying: "You only get married two or three times in a lifetime."

It was a totally unexpected course for one who had been known in Parliament as the soul of reliability. For years it had been said of Buck around the Commons that it was MPs like him who helped the Whips to sleep more easily at nights. For more than 30 years he ranked among the most loyal of Tories. When he voted against his party's line - as he did when he supported Richard Shepherd's Bill to reform the Official Secrets Act, and when he backed Michael Mates's attempt to band the poll tax according to income - it was regarded in the lobbies with some astonishment.

Until that aberration he would have been regarded by almost all his colleagues as a typical knight of the shires in his utter dependability. And his title, awarded in 1983 was a routine reward for long service and good conduct.

Though he lived in style for years in a Georgian country house, surrounded by a 30-acre park, his background was sound middle-class. Soundness, in fact, was one of his characteristics, until his extraordinary metamorphosis as an ageing satyr, though he had always combined it with a natural joviality which made him a popular figure on boths sides of the House.

Philip Antony Fyson Buck was born in Cambridgeshire, the son of a prosperous agricultural merchant and farmer. He was educated at King's School, Ely, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and seemed an obvious choice for a Cambridgeshire seat. But when he applied for one he was rejected, though he soon found consolation near by in Colchester where in 1961 he won a by-election caused by Cuthbert Alport's decision to go to the Lords.

Buck was a laywer as well as a politician, being called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1954 and taking silk 20 years later. He was also a director of his family firm of agricultural merchants.

But his eye had been on the Commons ever since his schooldays. He had been chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, as well as of the Federation of University Conservative and Unionist Associations in the days when Tory students were looked on with more favour by Central Office than they were later.

Buck concentrated on defence almost as soon as he entered the House. He was a fervent supporter of the Royal Navy, Nato and of a British reliance on American weaponry, particularly Star Wars. Under Heath he became Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Navy) in 1972. But after Harold Wilson and the Labour Party reassumed office in the general election of February 1974 Buck never held government office again. By the time Margaret Thatcher took the Tories back to power at the end of the decade he was seen as being yesterday's man.

He had backed Geoffrey Howe against Mrs Thatcher in the Tory leadership election in 1975, which did not help his prospects. Yet, his party recognised his expertise and acknowledged his past services by electing him chairman of its defence committee, which office he held from 1979 to 1990.

Before that he had been secretary and then chairman of the Conservative home affairs committee and a member of the executive of the 1922 Committee. His other important post was chairman of the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman).

He was not afraid to support unpopular causes, co-sponsoring a motion backing the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus even though he had twice travelled to Greece as the guest of a public relations firm working for the Greek Colonels.

But on the whole he devoted himself to the interests of his constituency and the Armed Forces. He argued passionately against naval and army cuts, he was all for maintaining Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, and he attacked the BBC for broadcasting Tumbledown which, he thought, gave a biased impression of the Falklands campaign.

Buck retired from his Colchchester North seat at the general election of 1992. (He had previously been MP for Colchester, but the constuencies had been redrawn in 1983.) By this time he was involved in his divorce from the second Lady Buck.

After his third marriage, he largely disappeared form the headlines, though there was a momentary flurry of press interest in his personal life in 1995, when he had to be treated in hospital after suffering cuts to his wrist and arm at his South London home. Police had been called there after a night-time altercation, and Lady Buck was questioned at Kennington police station. Buck did not press charges.

Anthony Buck was married in 1955 to Judy Grant, and they had a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1989 and in 1990 he married Bienvenida Pérez-Blanco. The marriage was dissolved in 1993. In 1994 he married Tamara-Norashkaryan. He is survived by her and by the daughter of his first marriage.

Sir Antony Buck, QC, Conservative MP for Colchester, 1961-83, and for Colchester North, 1983-92, was born on December 19, 1928. He died on October 6, 2003, aged 74.

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