Home > Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington

His family surname and life peerage are both spelt Carington (single "r"), whilst the hereditary peerage is Carrington (double "r").

Educated at EtonEton College is a public school (that is, an independent, fee-paying secondary school) for boys in Eton, Berkshire near Windsor in England. It boards approximately 1,200 boys between the ages of 13 and 18 who enjoy some outstanding facilities at a cost of and RMA SandhurstThe Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (commonly known as Sandhurst) is the British Army officer training centre. The academy is prestigious and has had many famous alumni including Sir Winston Churchill. The academy lies within the Bracknell Forest distric, he served as a major in the Grenadier GuardsThe British Grenadier Guards are one of the older, Foot Guards regiments of the British Army. The grouping of buttons on the tunic is a common way to distinguish between the regiments of Foot Guards. Grenadier Guards' buttons are equally spaced and plain in the Second World War.

He had an unbroken run of consecutive government positions for over 30 years, serving as Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry for Agriculture and Food from November 1951Events January events January 9 United Nations headquarters officially opens ( New York City). January 15 Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald," wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in We, then for the Ministry of Defence from October 1954 to October 1956. He was High Commissioner to Australia from then until October 1959, First Lord of the Admiralty until October 1963, then Leader of the House of Lords for a year until October 1964, when the Conservatives fell from power, becoming Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords until 1970 and again from 1974 until 1979.

He served as Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1972 to 1974.

He was Defence Secretary, and then, for a month from January to February 1974, Secretary of State for Energy. In 1979 he was made Foreign Secretary as part of the first Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher. He chaired the Lancaster House conference in 1979, a wrapup of Zimbabwe's revolutionary war attended by Ian Smith, Abel Muzorewa, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Herbert Chitepo, Josiah Tongogara that paved the way for second elections in February, 1980. He was Foreign Secretary in 1982 when the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentina, over which he resigned.

He was Secretary-General of NATO from 1983 to 1988. He was made Chancellor of Reading University in 1992, and has served as chairman of several companies, including Christie's, and as a director of many others, including Barclays Bank and Schweppes.

He was made a life peer in 1999 so that he could continue to sit in the House of Lords. His life peerage title is Baron Carington of Upton (with one "r").

There is also significant evidence that he is the current Chairman of the secretive Bilderberg group.

On 25 April, 1942, he married Iona McClean .