George Lloyd , 1st Baron Lloyd George Ambrose Lloyd , 1st Baron Lloyd GCSI , GCIE , DSO , PC ( 19 September 1879 – 4 February 1941 ) was a British Conservative politician strongly associated with the " Diehard " wing of the party . Background and education . Lloyd was the son of Sampson Samuel Lloyd ( whose namesake father was also a Member of Parliament ) and Jane Emilia , daughter of Thomas Lloyd . He was educated at Eton and Trinity College , Cambridge . He coxed the Cambridge crew in the 1899 and 1900 Boat Races . He left without taking a degree , unsettled by the deaths of both his parents in 1899 , and made a tour of India . Early life . In 1901 Lloyd joined the family firm Stewarts & Lloyds as its youngest director . In 1903 he first became involved with the tariff reform movement of Joseph Chamberlain . In 1905 he turned down an offer by Stewarts & Lloyds of a steady position in London and chose to embark on a study of the East in the British Empire . Through the efforts of his friends Samuel Pepys Cockerell , working in the commercial department of the Foreign Office , and Gertrude Bell , whom he had come to know , he started work as an unpaid honorary attaché in Constantinople . At " Old Stamboul " – as he came to remember the Embassy of Sir Nicholas O ' Conor – he worked together with Laurence Oliphant , Percy Loraine and Alexander Cadogan . There also he first met Mark Sykes and Aubrey Herbert . In April 1906 Aubrey Herbert joined him on an exploration of the state of the Baghdad Railway . His confidential memorandum of November 1906 on the Hejaz railway gave a detailed account of many economic problems . This , and other papers – on Turkish finance , for example – led to his appointment in January 1907 as a special commissioner to investigate trading prospects around the Persian Gulf . Political career . At the January 1910 general election Lloyd was elected as a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament ( MP ) for West Staffordshire , marrying Blanche Lascelles the following year . In February 1914 , Lloyd was adopted as Unionist Parliamentary candidate for Shrewsbury ahead of the next general election ( expected no later than 1916 ) when the sitting MP , unrelated namesake George Butler Lloyd , intended to retire . The general election and his candidacy were both forestalled by the outbreak of the First World War , while the sitting member continued to hold his seat until 1922 . He and another backbench colleague in Parliament , Leopold Amery , lobbied the Conservative leadership to press for an immediate declaration of war against Germany on 1 August 1914 . As a Lieutenant in the Warwickshire Yeomanry , Lloyd was called up after Britain entered the war three days later . During that war he served on the staff of Sir Ian Hamilton at Gallipoli landing with the ANZACs on the first day of that campaign ; took part in a special British mission to Petrograd to improve Anglo - Russian liaison ; visited Basra to update his study of commerce in the Persian Gulf ; and , after a time in Cairo , with T . E . Lawrence and the Arab Bureau in Hejaz , the Negev and the Sinai desert . He reached the rank of Captain in the Warwickshire Yeomanry ( in which regiment he continued to hold rank until 1925 ) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and made Companion of the Indian Empire in 1917 . For services in the same war he also received the Russian Empire ' s Order of St Anne , 3rd Class and the Order of Al Nahda ( 2nd class ) of the Kingdom of Hejaz . In conjunction with Edward Wood ( later Earl of Halifax ) he wrote " The Great Opportunity " in 1918 . This book was meant to be a Conservative challenge to the Lloyd George coalition and stressed devolution of power from Westminster and the importance of reviving English industry and agriculture . In December 1918 he was appointed Governor of Bombay and made KCIE . His principal activities while Governor were reclaiming land for housing in the Back Bay area of the city of Bombay and building the Lloyd Barrage ( now Sukkur Barrage ) an irrigation scheme , both of which were funded by loans raised in India instead of in England . Lloyd ' s administration was the first to raise such funds locally . His province was one of the centres of Indian nationalist unrest , to deal with which he insisted in 1921 on the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi , who was subsequently gaoled for six years for sedition . He completed his term as Governor in 1922 and was made a Privy Counsellor and GCSI . He returned to Parliament again for Eastbourne in 1924 , serving until 1925 , when he was made Baron Lloyd , of Dolobran in the County of Montgomery , called after his Welsh ancestral home . Following his ennoblement , he was appointed High Commissioner to Egypt , serving until his resignation was forced upon him by Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson in 1929 . His views and experience formed the background of a self - justifying two - volume book , " Egypt Since Cromer " ( published 1933 - 34 ) . During the 1930s he was one of the most prominent opponents of proposals to grant Indian Home Rule , working alongside Winston Churchill against the National Government . From 1931 to 1935 Lord Lloyd employed James Lees - Milne as one of his male secretaries . When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 , he appointed Lloyd as Secretary of State for the Colonies and in December of that year he conferred on him the additional job of Leader of the House of Lords . Private life and character . Lord Lloyd was an Anglo - Catholic , and élitist . He firmly believed the British upper - class es were uniquely fitted to rule a colonial Empire . He was an excellent administrator but he was not fond of speaking in public . As a repressed homosexual he surrounded himself with handsome young men . Although an ardent anti - semite himself he was suspicious of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement , which he saw as a threat to Britain . Family . Lord Lloyd married Blanche Lascelles , daughter of the Hon . Frederick Lascelles , in 1911 . He died of myeloid leukaemia at a clinic in Marylebone , London , in February 1941 , aged 61 and was buried at St Ippolyts , Hertfordshire . He was succeeded in the barony by his son , Alexander . Lady Lloyd died in December 1969 , aged 89 . Biography . " Lord Lloyd and the decline of the British Empire " , John Charmley , Weidenfeld 1987