John Nott

Sir John William Frederic Nott KCB (born 1 February 1932 in Bideford, Devon) is a former British Conservative Party politician prominent in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He featured heavily in the public eye as Secretary of State for Defence during the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands and the subsequent Falklands War.

Early life
The son of Richard Nott and Phyllis née Francis, Nott was educated at Bradfield College and was commissioned as a regular officer in the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in Malaysia (1952–1956). He left to study law and economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society. At Cambridge he met his future wife Miloshka, herself a refugee from Communist Slovenia (Yugoslavia). They have two sons and a daughter.

Member of Parliament
Nott was Member of Parliament for St Ives in Cornwall from 1966 to 1983. Interestingly, John Nott was the last person to commence his parliamentary career under the nearly obsolete National Liberal label. The National Liberals were formally absorbed by the Conservatives in 1968 and Nott then sat as a Conservative MP.

In government
Nott served in the early 1970s government of Prime Minister Ted Heath as a junior Treasury minister. He joined the shadow cabinet in 1976 and the Cabinet when Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election. With this appointment to the cabinet, he was made a Privy Counsellor. He served first as the Secretary of State for Trade and was moved to Defence in the reshuffle of January 1981.

He was widely criticised by the Royal Navy chiefs over the 1981 Defence White Paper for his decision to cut back on government naval expenditure during the severe economic recession of the early 1980s; the cuts originally included the proposed scrapping of the Antarctic patrol ship HMS Endurance (1967) and withdrawal of numerous major surface vessels, including aircraft carriers, shortly before the outbreak of the Falklands War.

Resignation and retirement
Nott offered his resignation to Thatcher following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in March 1982. Unlike then Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, however, the resignation was not accepted. Nott remained Secretary of State for Defence throughout the four-month conflict. He was eventually replaced by Michael Heseltine in January 1983 when Nott announced he would not seek re-election in 1983. In the same year, he was knighted, as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

Together with John Major, he is the only surviving member of Mrs Thatcher's cabinet who does not currently sit in either house of Parliament. In 1985 he became Chairman and Chief Executive of the banking firm Lazard Brothers. He now lives on his farm at St Erth in Cornwall.

Personal life
Nott's son, Julian Nott, is a film composer, screenwriter and director, most famous for writing the scores for the Wallace & Gromit animated short films. Nott's other son, William, works for an international oil company in London. Nott's daughter, Sasha, is married to the Member of Parliament for East Devon, Hugo Swire MP; who was until July 2007, the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. In the new coalition government he is Minister of State for Northern Ireland.

Autobiography
Nott's autobiography Here Today, Gone Tomorrow is a reference to the infamous interview conducted by Sir Robin Day in October 1982. Day asked Nott whether the public should believe the retiring MP's statements on defence cuts, since (Day thought) Nott was a "here today, gone tomorrow politician" (Nott had either recently announced or was shortly to announce that he would not stand at the next election). Nott then stood up, threw down his microphone, called the interview "ridiculous", and promptly walked off set.

In the media
Nott was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.

In popular culture
Nott was portrayed by Clive Merrison in the 2002 BBC production of Ian Curteis's controversial The Falklands Play. In the film The Iron Lady Nott is played by Angus Wright.