Anthony Berry

Sir Anthony George Berry (12 February 1925 – 12 October 1984) was a British Conservative politician. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield Southgate and a Whip in Margaret Thatcher's government.

Berry sat in the House of Commons for twenty years until being killed in the Brighton hotel bombing of 1984 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Early life Born in Eton, Buckinghamshire, Berry was the sixth and youngest son of the newspaper magnate Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley, and his wife Mary née Holmes.

Educated at Eton College, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford (graduating MA), before serving as a Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards from 1943 to 1947.

Career After resigning his commission in the Guards, Berry went into journalism. He was an Assistant Editor of The Sunday Times from 1952 to 1954, when he was appointed as Editor of the Sunday Chronicle.

Standing as a Conservative, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Southgate (later Enfield Southgate) at the 1964 general election,

Death On 12 October 1984, Berry was murdered in the Brighton hotel bombing, when a bomb was planted at the Grand Brighton Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference. He was 59.

Since Magee's release, Berry's daughter Jo, has been appointed CBE after receiving attention for her series of controversial meetings with the Brighton bomber, as part of her quest to come to terms with the bombing and, in her own words, "to bring something positive out of it". Some of their discussions were filmed for an Everyman programme, shown on BBC Two in December 2001. She has received criticism from other families of IRA victims for her liaisons.

A ceremony was held in Berry's Enfield Southgate constituency on 12 October 2009, the 25th anniversary of the bombing, at which his widow (wife of Lord Donoughue) and her daughter Sasha unveiled a plaque in his honour at the newly-renamed Sir Anthony Berry House in Chaseville Parade, Winchmore Hill. Mary's sister, Frances Shand Kydd, married John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, and so Berry was an uncle of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Berry and his wife Mary had four children: Alexandra Mary Bartz (born 1955), Antonia Ruth Butterworth and Joanna Cynthia Tufnell (twins, born 1957), and Edward Anthony Morys Berry (born 1960), whose son William Berry married Alicia Rose Meynell in 2024.

Honours and appointments

1962/63: High Sheriff of Glamorgan 1960: Justice of the Peace (JP)