Ronald Cartland - Background

Background

Ronald Cartland was the son of Major Bertram Cartland and Mary Hamilton Scobell, and the younger brother of novelist Barbara Cartland. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy Birmingham financier, who committed suicide four years before Ronald's birth. With no inheritance to finance the family's affluent country lifestyle, Ronald's father and his family moved to a rented farmhouse near the town of Pershore, in Worcestershire. In 1910 Bertram Cartland then went to work for the local Conservative Party office, where he managed the election of the Tory MP candidate. When the candidate won the election, he offered Bertram the post of private secretary. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Bertram volunteered for military duty, and was sent to France. He was killed near Berry-au-Bac, France, in 1918, just five months before the Armistice.

In 1919 Mary Cartland – along with Ronald, her 18-year-old daughter Barbara and 8-year-old son Anthony – moved to London, and Ronald gained a scholarship to Charterhouse School, a public school in Surrey. While there he expressed his desire to become a Conservative MP – but at the same time, he held progressive views that were at odds with the Tory party, and the prevailing social norms at Charterhouse. When Ronald was a child, Mary Cartland would take him with her on her trips to some of the more poverty-stricken areas of Pershore, giving him a first-hand look at their dire economic straits. After leaving Charterhouse, Mary Cartland could not afford to send her son to university, so Ronald went to work at the Conservative Party Central Office in London.