Eliot Crawshay-Williams

Who was Eliot Crawshay-Williams?

Eliot Crawshay-Williams, was a British author, officer, and Liberal Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.

Crawshay-Williams was the son of Arthur John Williams, a Welsh barrister and politician. He was educated at Eton, and Trinity College, Oxford. He joined the Royal Field Artillery and at the 1906 general election stood as a Liberal candidate in the Chorley constituency in Lancashire. He had been employed by Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office from 1906 to 1908. He was elected at the January 1910 general election as MP for Leicester, serving as parliamentary private secretary to David Lloyd George. He resigned from Parliament in 1913 following his being named as co-respondent in a divorce case brought by fellow Liberal Hubert Carr-Gomm the MP for Rotherhithe. It was as he wrote in his autobiography "the death blow of my career".

During the rest of the First World War, Crawshay-Williams saw active service in the 1st Leicestershire Royal Horse Artillery in Egypt and Palestine from 1915-17. From 1918 to 1920 he was attached to the headquarters of the Northern Command mainly based in Egypt. During World War Two he served as Chief Civil Defence Officer at Treforest.