Robert (Robin) John Maxwell-Hyslop MP1 2 3
(6 Jun 1931 – 13 Jan 2010)
Robin Maxwell-Hyslop was born in Ivy Bridge, the son of A H Maxwell-Hyslop, Captain of HMS Cumberland. In Jul 1940, at the age of 9, he was sent to relatives in Canada, where he attended Upper Canada College, which is said to have instilled him with a rather unreverential Canadian attitude to life. Returning to Britain in 1943 he was sent to Stowe, where he was taken under the wing of the great headmaster, J F Roxburgh.
Thereafter, he read PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became a committee member of the Oxford Union and president of the University Conservative Association.
He served his National Service with the Royal Artillery – in later life he frequently wore his gunner's tie in the House of Commons to emphasise his interest in servicemen's welfare.
He joined Rolls-Royce as a graduate apprentice in 1954, moved into export sales in 1958 and was chosen as personal assistant to Sir David Huddie, Director and General Manager of the sales and service department. But he had been bitten by the political bug, and fought Derby North in the General Election of 8 Oct 1959 before winning Tiverton at a by-election on 16 Nov 1960 (which was occasioned by the elevation of the sitting Conservative MP Derick Heathcoat-Amory to the House of Lords on 1 Sep that year, following a 3-year stint as Chancellor of the Exchequer).
Maxwell-Hyslop was renowned as a man of great integrity, strength of character and determination. Just as he had previously become enormously knowledgeable about aero engines, he now acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of parliamentary procedure and was once jocularly accused of taking Erskine May to bed with him.
He used this arcane know-how to great effect on behalf of the issues he wished to have debated, or blocked, and the causes he wanted to gain support. Somewhat like the proverbial Marmite yeast-extract, he provoked admiration or infuriation in equal measure amongst his fellow-Members. The veteran parliamentarian Tam Dalyell said in his obituary of Maxwell-Hyslop,
"Certainly the House of Commons post-1945 had never seen his like; I doubt if Parliament will ever see his like again."
But what, you may well ask with some degree of acerbity, does all this have to do with Sonia? The only clue you may possibly have noticed was the link to Sir David Huddie's obituary, which also featured in the Bantry Connection as David and Betty Huddy plus their three sons were great friends of the Kaulbacks and stayed at Ardnagashel every summer for many years.
And so it was that Sonia and Susie, by then successful (though impecunious) alumnae of the Miss Catherine Judson Secretarial College in South Kensington, were invited up to spend the long Easter weekend in 1961 with the Huddie family in Derby. As also was David Huddie's protégé, the recently elected MP for Tiverton.
Robin MH was bowled over by the delightful Miss Kaulback, and paid her every attention consistent with the still quite strict proprieties of the era. On returning to London, he courted her at every opportunity, and she accompanied him to H of C social occasions (tea on the H of C terrace with Gerald Nabarro, eccentric MP for Kidderminster, is one she particularly recalls), went to watch him in Parliamentary debates (using the special entrance pass he had arranged for her), and introduced him to her parents.
He asked her to marry him. But he was ten years her senior, and though very gentlemanly and a thoroughly Good Egg, she on her side didn't feel any chemistry – let alone biology – and the political arena wasn't something that naturally appealed to her in any case. (Indeed, her father would frequently remark that he didn't mind what sort of chaps his daughters wanted to marry, so long as they weren't actors, missionaries or politicians!). And so, in due course, they went their own ways.