John Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham (15 April 1924 – 31 December 2001) was a British journalist and politician who was best known for his 1957 article in the The Monarchy Today, in which he made scathing criticisms of Queen Elizabeth II and her court. Many of the proposals which he laid out to the Queen in a secret meeting, including televising the Christmas speech and allowing for working-class families to attend debutante balls, would be adopted, and he was later credited with doing more than any other Briton in the 20th century to save the monarchy.
Biography[]
John Grigg was born in Westminster, London, England in 1924, the son of Edward Grigg, the Governor of Kenya. He graduated from Eton College before serving in the British Army during World War II, serving as a platoon commander in France and Belgium before ending the war as an intelligence officer. In 1948, after graduating from New College, Oxford, he joined his father's National Review. In 1951, he ran for the House of Commons in Oldham West as a liberal Conservative Party member, but was defeated. He lost the election once more in 1955, and he inherited the title "Baron Altrincham" and the National and English Review from his father that same year.
In 1956, Altrincham attacked Anthony Eden's government for its handling of the Suez Crisis and pressed for an immediate British withdrawal from Port Said. He also championed reform of the House of Lords and, as an alternative, its abolition, and he also advocated for the induction of women priests into the Church of England. In an August 1957 article, he argued that the court of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain was too upper-class and British, and argued for a more egalitarian and Commonwealth court. He said that the Queen's public speaking style was "a pain in the neck", that she frequently depended upon written text, and that she portrayed herself as "priggish" (self-righteous) with her paternalistic speeches. The BBC censured his views on the monarchy, and 85% of Britons disagreed with his views in polls taken the same day as his publication. He was even assaulted by League of Empire Loyalists member Philip Kinghorn Burbidge as he left an interview with Impact host Robin Day, being punched in the face. However, when his interview was broadcast that evening, half of the country came to agree with him, as he claimed to be a committed monarchist who sought only to ensure its survival by helping it to adapt to the progressive, postwar Britain. He even met privately with Queen Elizabeth and gave her several suggestions on what to add and what to remove. Debutantes parties were ended in 1958, and the Christmas speech was also televised.
In 1963, following the passage of the 1963 Peerage Act, Altrincham disclaimed his peerage and became known simply as "John Grigg". In the late 1960s, he became a writer, writing a multi-volume biography of the British prime minister David Lloyd George. He showed sympathy and affinity for Lloyd George, and the last volume would be finished by Lloyd George's great-granddaughter a year after Grigg's 2001 death. In 1982, he left the Conservative Party for the UK Social Democratic Party, and he died in 2001 at the age of 77.