David Arthur Russell Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford, (born 18 January 1936) is a British Conservative Party politician, journalist, and economic consultant. Having been successively Secretary of State for Energy and then for Transport under Margaret Thatcher, Howell has more recently been a Minister of State in the Foreign Office from the election in 2010 until the reshuffle of 2012. He has served as Chair of the House of Lords International Relations Committee since May 2016. Along with William Hague, Sir George Young and Kenneth Clarke, he is one of the few Cabinet ministers from the 1979–97 governments who continued to hold high office in the party, being its deputy leader in the House of Lords until 2010. His daughter, Frances, was married to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
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Early life
Howell was educated at Eton College, before entering King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1959 with first-class honours in economics. He proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts in 1963. He went to work in HM Treasury joining the Treasury Economic Section from 1959 to 1960. In 1960 he wrote the book Principles to Practice, published jointly, and spent four years as a journalist, leader writer and special correspondent on The Daily Telegraph. He succeeded Geoffrey Howe as editor of Crossbow (the journal of the Bow Group) from 1962 to 1964 before he unsuccessfully contested the constituency of Dudley in the 1964 general election.
Political career
Two years later, in 1966, Howell was elected MP for the safe seat of Guildford in Surrey, for the Conservative Party, a seat he held until retiring at the 1997 general election. On 6 June 1997 he was made a life peer as Baron Howell of Guildford, of Penton Mewsey, in the County of Hampshire.