Mark Colville, 4th Viscount Colville of Culross

Who was Mark Colville, 4th Viscount Colville of Culross?

John Mark Alexander Colville, 4th Viscount Colville of Culross QC was a British judge and politician. He was one of the 92 hereditary peers elected to remain in the House of Lords after the House of Lords Act 1999.

The son of the 3rd Viscount Colville of Culross, he succeeded to his father's title in 1945, at the age of twelve. He was educated at Rugby School and New College, Oxford, where he graduated a with a Bachelor of Arts in law in 1957, and with a Master of Arts in 1963.

Colville served in the Grenadier Guards reaching the rank of Lieutenant. Called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1960, he became a Queen's Counsel in 1978 and a Bencher in 1986. Between 1980 and 1983, he was the Representative of the United Kingdom to the UN Commission on Human Rights, and between 1983 and 1987 Special Rapporteur on Guatemala as well as chair of the Mental Health Act Commission. He was chairman of the Parole Board for England and Wales from 1988 to 1992, Recorder from 1990 to 1993 and Judge of the South Eastern Circuit from 1993 to 1999. From 1996 to 2000, he was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee and was an Assistant Surveillance Commissioner from 2001.