Family Background
Colville came from a politically active and well connected family, although, as he stated in the introduction to his published diaries, he was the younger son of a younger son and so did not inherit family wealth.
His father was the Hon. George Charles Colville, and earned his living as the secretary of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. He was the younger son of Charles Colville, 1st Viscount Colville of Culross, a Conservative politician who served as Master of the Buckhounds and Tory Chief Whip.
His mother was Lady Cynthia, courtier and social worker. She was the daughter of Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe, by his first wife, the former Sibyl Graham, daughter of the Graham Baronets of Netherby. Colville never knew this grandmother, who died young; his grandfather, a Liberal Cabinet minister, re-married, choosing Margaret (Peggy) Primrose, daughter of Lord Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister in 1894-1895, and his wife Hannah, heiress to the Rothschild fortune. (Indeed, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild was a close friend of Colvilles.) Lady Cynthia, in addition to her duties as a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary, devoted her energies to alleviating the suffering of Shoreditch, one of the poorest areas of the East End of London.
Jock Colville had two elder brothers, David Richard (b. 11 May 1909 - d. 9 February 1987) and Major Philip Robert Colville (b. 7 November 1910 - d. 11 April 1997). Colville's first cousin and schoolmate was Terence O'Neill, later Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1964-1969. Other relatives included O'Neill's successor James Chichester-Clark, and Colville's aunt Mary Innes-Ker, Duchess of Roxburghe.
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