Edward Charles Gurney Boyle, Baron Boyle of Handsworth, P.C., C.H., was born in 1923, the eldest child of Sir Edward Boyle, a lawyer and prominent member of the Balkan Committee, and of Beatrice (ne Greig). He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. War service in intelligence at Bletchley Park intervened between his school-days and undergraduate career. He went up to Oxford in 1945 and became president of the Oxford Union Society in 1948. He was elected Conservative M.P. for the Handsworth (Birmingham) constituency in November 1950 and retained the seat until he left politics in 1970. He obtained his first government post in 1954 as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Supply and later served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Despite resigning over the Suez affair he soon returned to government, rising to cabinet rank and privy counsellor as Minister of Education in 1962. After the Conservative Party's defeat in the October 1964 general election he became opposition spokesman on education and science. In October 1969 he resigned from the shadow cabinet having accepted the post of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds in succession to Sir Roger Stevens who was due to retire in September 1970. In the dissolution honours list that year he was made a life peer. While at Leeds he served on the Top Salaries Review Body, and was chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals from 1977-1979. He died in September 1981.
From the guide to the Additional papers of Edward Charles Gurney Boyle, Baron Boyle of Handsworth, ca.1960-1981, (Leeds University Library)
