Christopher Chancellor

Sir Christopher John Howard Chancellor (29 March 1904 – 9 September 1989) was a British journalist and administrator who was general manager of the news agency Reuters from 1944 to 1959. The Daily Telegraph credited him for keeping the company running under extremely difficult wartime circumstances, noting that "It was largely thanks to Chancellor that Reuters had survived the war intact, despite the loss for several years of the greatest part of its world market."[1] By 1951, at the firm's 100th anniversary, Chancellor was credited with tripling the agency's correspondents and revenues.[2]

Biography

Chancellor was son of Lt. Col. Sir John Robert Chancellor, GCMG, GCVO, GBE, DSO (1870–1952), a colonial administrator. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. Chancellor joined Reuters in 1930 and remained with the agency for 29 years.

Based in Shanghai from 1931 to 1939 with his young family, he kept the agency's China service operating after the Japanese invasion in 1932.[1] He returned to London during World War II, and worked with William Moloney and William Haley in reorganising Reuters' news and business operations, succeeding Sir Roderic Jones as the general manager of Reuters in 1944.

Chancellor was knighted in the 1951 King's Birthday Honours List. He died at Wincanton in southwest England, aged 85 years old, and was survived by his widow, his two sons and two daughters (the eldest having died young).

Family

He was married in 1926 to Sylvia Mary Paget (1 July 1901 London – 26 October 1996 Shellingford, Oxfordshire), eldest daughter of Sir Richard Arthur Surtees Paget, 2nd Bt by his wife Lady Muriel Finch-Hatton, only surviving child of granddaughter maternally of the 12th Earl of Nottingham & Winchilsea, who was himself descended from a sibling of Jane Austen. His wife Lady Chancellor was made OBE 1976 for her philanthropic activities.

Children:[3]

  1. John Paget Chancellor (1 July 1927 – 31 December 2014), author, publisher and editor of Knowledge encyclopædia,[4] married 1959 (divorced 1968) Hon (Mary) Alice Jolliffe (d. 2009), only daughter of William Jolliffe, 4th Baron Hylton and his wife Lady Perdita Asquith, herself daughter of Raymond Asquith, eldest son of H.H. Asquith), British Prime Minister in the early 20th century. They had issue, one son and three daughters. (Mary Jolliffe remarried Hon. Richard Windsor-Clive, by whom she had a daughter, but they divorced after 25 years of marriage).[5]
    1. Isabel Rose Chancellor (born 1959) married 1982 (John) Joseph Boothby (born 1947),[6] eldest and elder surviving son of Basil Boothby CMG, sometime Ambassador to Iceland, of the Boothby baronets, by his wife Susan Penelope Asquith, third daughter of Brigadier Arthur Melland Asquith, third son of H.H. Asquith. They have issue, two sons and a daughter.[7] Isabel's sister-in-law Emily Boothby is wife of author Piers Paul Read.
    2. Katherine Sylvia Anthony Chancellor (born 1961) married 1stly 1989 (divorced 1997) Will Self (William Woodard Self) (born 1961) the novelist, by whom she has issue, one son and one daughter. She married 2ndly 1992 the chef Rowley Leigh.[7]
    3. (John) Edward Chancellor, "Eddy" (born 1962),[7] formerly a banker with Lazard Brothers in London, now an investment manager. He is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (1999).[8] In February 2009 he married Antonia Phillips, former wife of Martin Amis.[9]
    4. Anna Chancellor (born 27 April 1965), actress, best known as the Sloaney "Duckface" in Four Weddings and a Funeral. She married 1993 (divorced 1998)[10] Nigel Willoughby, by whom she had no issue. Anna also has a daughter Poppy (born 1988) by a prior relationship.[5]
  2. a daughter, died young of spinal meningitis in China.
  3. Teresa Chancellor (born 1933) married 1stly 1953 (divorced 1977) Edward Victor Gatacre; they had issue two sons and three daughters.[11] She married 2ndly 1982 John Campbell Wells, artist (d. 1998), and had one daughter, Dolly Wells.[11]
  4. Susanna Maria Chancellor (born 1935) married 1958 Nicholas Johnston; they had issue, one son and three daughters, of whom the eldest daughter married Percy Weatherall and the youngest daughter married his younger brother.[12]
  5. Alexander Surtees Chancellor (4 January 1940 – 28 January 2017) married 2 June1964 Susanna Elisabeth Debenham;,[13] only daughter of Martin Ridley Debenham (younger brother of Sir Piers Debenham, 2nd Bt. (d.1964), who married Lady Chancellor's younger sister, and of Sir Gilbert Debenham, 3rd Bt.). They had issue, including
    1. Elizabeth Beatrice (Eliza) Chancellor (born 22 December 1964);[13] married 3 November 1990[14] Alexander Waugh, elder son of Auberon Waugh (himself eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh) and his wife Lady Teresa Onslow, eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Onslow. They have issue.
    2. Cecilia Mary Chancellor (born 1 September 1966),[15] model;[16] she has issue.[17] In late 2005, she was reported to be engaged to John Powlett "Jo" Colman (b 1962),[18] publisher and CEO of Psychology Today and other formerly defunct magazines. Colman is the younger son of Sir Michael Colman, 3rd Bt.[19]

Chancellor's sister Rosemary married Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot, and was the mother of Simon John Elliot[20] who is married to (Sonia) Annabel Shand, sister of the Duchess of Cornwall.

Notes
  1. via Associated Press. "Christopher Chancellor, Who Led Reuters for 15 Years, Dies at 85", The New York Times, 12 September 1989. Retrieved 12 January 2008.
  2. "100 for Reuters", Time, 23 July 1951. Retrieved 12 January 2008.
  3. Burke's Peerage entry for Paget Bt of Cranmore Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine as listed on a website. Some details Archived 23 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine are given here, and others come from Wikipedia articles and their references
  4. Obituary of John Chancellor, The Daily Telegraph 8 January 2015. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11333583/John-Chancellor-obituary.html
  5. pandp2 AT rcn.com 2007 cites Ostler 2001
  6. Lundy, Darryl. "(John) Joseph Boothby". The Peerage.
  7. Burke's Peerage entry for Paget Bt of Cranmore Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machineop.cit.
  8. Profile of Edward Chancellor, Harriman House Ltd, archived from the original on 7 February 2012, retrieved 1 August 2012
  9. nndb staff 2012; and pandp2 AT rcn.com 2007 cites: Ostler 2001 for Eddie's relationship.
  10. pandp2 AT rcn.com 2007 cites: Ostler 2001 Other sources give 1999 for the year of divorce.
  11. Burke's Peerage entry for Paget Bt of Cranmore Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machineop.cit.
  12. Burke's Peerage entry for Paget Bt of Cranmore Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machineop.cit.. Percy Weatherall's marriage is also listed in his Wikipedia entry.
  13. Graeme Wall (2001). Descendants of Archibald Kenrick (November 1760 – 26 October 1835). Retrieved 8 January 2008. . The Imdb entry states mistakenly that they had one child. They have two daughters.
  14. Lundy, Darryl. "Chancellor family update". The Peerage.
  15. Graeme Wall (2001). Op.cit.
  16. Degen Pener. " EGOS & IDS; Celebrity in Their Blood, Stardom in Their Eyes", The New York Times, 30 May 1993. In that year, her father was Talk of the Town editor at The New Yorker, and she was with Women Models.
  17. Vogue April 2004 cover story and photos
  18. Lundy, Darryl. "John Powlett "Jo" Colman". The Peerage.
  19. Lundy, Darryl. "Sir Michael Colman, 3rd Bt". The Peerage.
  20. Lundy, Darryl. "Simon John Elliot". The Peerage. The Peerage database
gollark: Because people like that sort of thing for reasons?
gollark: d i m i n i s h i n g m a r g i n a l u t i l i t y ™
gollark: I care about money inasmuch as money allows me to have nice things.
gollark: Yes, but I said "less than twice as much".
gollark: Vaguely relatedly, gaining 1 megadollar would probably cause less than twice as much as a QoL improvement as 0.5 megadollars.

References
  • pandp2 AT rcn.com (24 October 2007), Chancellor interviews, archived from the original on 8 January 2008, retrieved 8 January 2008 News clippings of
    • "Lady Chancellor: A philanthropist of wit and charm who remained unbowed by war in Shanghai or the Blitz in London", The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 1996
    • Johnson, Syrie (8 July 1999), "The traders who turn to novels", London Evening Standard
  • Martin Amis profile, nndb.com, 8 August 2012

Further reading
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