Family and Early Life
Ramsay was from an aristocratic family (he was a descendant of the Earls of Dalhousie). He attended Eton College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, joining the Coldstream Guards in 1913. On the outbreak of World War I he served in France for two years. He later received a severe head injury before being invalided out and transferred to the War Office in London. Here he met and married on 30 April 1917 Lady Ninian Crichton-Stuart, née Hon. Ismay Preston, daughter of Viscount Gormanston and widow of Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart MP, who had been killed on active service in the war. His wife was already the mother of three surviving children. The couple went on to have four sons together, the eldest of whom died on active service in 1943.
As the war was coming to an end, Ramsay served at the British War Mission in Paris. He retired from the Army with the rank of Captain in 1920. He spent the 1920s as a company director, near Arbroath, Angus, and became active in the Conservative Party. In the 1931 general election, Ramsay was elected as MP for Peebles and Southern Midlothian. He was regarded as a likable and charming man (he was nicknamed 'Jock' among friends), who had a sincere and earnest approach and was an engaging and persuasive public speaker. However, Ramsay was not considered as a potential candidate for high office: the most senior appointment he obtained was as a Government member of the Potato Marketing Board.
Read more about this topic: Archibald Maule Ramsay
Famous quotes containing the words early life, family and, family, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Q: What would have made a family and career easier for you?
A: Being born a man.”
—Anonymous Mother, U.S. physician and mother of four. As quoted in Women and the Work Family Dilemma, by Deborah J. Swiss and Judith P. Walker, ch. 2 (1993)
“In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 14:25.
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)