Lord Luce is a former politician. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament and government minister, and later Governor of Gibraltar, before becoming a crossbench peer. He is an alumnus of Christ’s and has been an Honorary Fellow of the College since 2005.
 
Richard Napier Luce completed his National Service in Cyprus prior to coming up to Christ’s in 1957 to read History. He graduated in 1960 and joined the Overseas Civil Service. After two years as a district officer in Kenya he went into marketing and then became Director of the National Innovations Centre. 

He first entered parliament in 1971 as a Conservative MP for Arundel and Shoreham and was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Trade and Consumer Affairs from 1972 to 1974. When the Conservative Party lost the general election in 1974, he was returned for the new Shoreham constituency, a seat he held until he retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. He became an Opposition Whip in 1974, and from 1977 Opposition Spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1979, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, promoted to Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in 1981, but he resigned in 1982 over the Falklands War. The following year he returning to office, and in 1985 became a Minister in the Privy Council Office with responsibility for the Arts and for the Civil Service, resigning in 1990.

Lord Luce was knighted in 1991. Between 1992 and 1996 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, and the following year was appointed Governor and Commander in Chief of Gibraltar, serving until 2000 when he was created a Life Peer as Baron Luce of Ardur in the County of West Sussex, taking up his seat as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords where he remained until 2020. He was invested as a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 2000 and took up the office of Lord Chamberlain of HM The Queen’s Royal Household. He became a Permanent Lord in Waiting to the Queen in 2007, and he continues to serve the King in this role. In 2008 he was created a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter. He was High Steward of Westminster Abbey from 2011 to 2016.  

Photo credit: © House of Lords / photography by Roger Harris