Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet

Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Baron Kennet (2 August 1923 – 7 May 2009) was a British writer and politician, notably concerned with planning and conservation. As a Labour minister, he was responsible for setting up the Department of the Environment and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Later he joined the SDP. He lost his seat in the Lords following the House of Lords Act 1999.

Early life Young was the son of the multi-talented politician Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet, and the sculptor Kathleen Scott, née Bruce, widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic. One uncle was Geoffrey Winthrop Young, the mountaineer. His half-brother was the painter and conservationist Sir Peter Scott. After West Downs School, he spent one unhappy term at Winchester College before going on to Alpine College, Stowe School and finally as an Exhibitioner at Trinity College, Cambridge. During World War II, he served in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1945, as an Ordinary Seaman and as Sublieutenant. He then went on to the Foreign Office serving between 1946 and 1947 and 1949–1951.

In between and after, Young was a journalist – Observer correspondent in Rome and North Africa, and weekly columnist on The Guardian ("Sitting on a Column"), and theatre critic for Tribune. He was a frequent contributor to Encounter, where his articles were widely noticed – among them "Sitting on a Fortune" (about prostitution) and a review showing up many errors of fact in Roland Huntford's book on Scott and Amundsen, which denigrated the former (ignoring the scientific character of Scott's expedition), and presented the event as merely a "race" that the latter "won".

Young also wrote three novels, and several pamphlets for the Fabian Society on defence, disarmament, pollution, Europe and other topics, some with his wife, Elizabeth Young. Together they also wrote a book, Old London Churches (which identified the six churches designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor as works of real genius). Young also took part in the Campaign for the Abolition of Theatre Censorship as its Secretary. His energetic interest in disarmament did not lead him to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – it worked for unilateral British nuclear disarmament: he believed that only general and comprehensive disarmament could be useful and effective.

Political career Young succeeded to the title of Baron Kennet, and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1960 upon the death of his father. He started his political career in the Labour Party, having joined in opposition to the Suez Crisis in 1956. Under the terms of the House of Lords Act 1999, he lost his automatic right to a seat; he was unsuccessful in the election by the Labour hereditary peers of two of their number to continue to sit after the coming into force of the Act, finishing last in a field of six candidates.

In 2005, he sought to return to the House in the by-election among Liberal Democrat hereditary peers caused by the death of Earl Russell; he was unsuccessful, receiving no votes. and an active member of the Avebury Society and Action for the River Kennet (ARK).

Personal life Lord Kennet married Elizabeth Ann Adams in 1948. They had a son, William Aldus (Thoby) Young, and five daughters: Easter Russell, educationalist; the sculptor Emily Young; Mopsa English, educationalist; and the writers Louisa Young (aka children's author Zizou Corder) and Zoe Young.

Emily, described as an enigmatic and modish teenager in the 1960s, was the probable inspiration for the Pink Floyd song "See Emily Play".

The family homes were in Bayswater and in Wiltshire, where in 1908 Young's father had bought The Lacket, an 18th-century thatched cottage on the edge of the village of Lockeridge, near Marlborough.

Works Young published on a wide range of mostly political topics, especially on the politics of Italy, on disarmament and arms control, on the churches of London often collaborating with his wife Elizabeth Young, and on various political scandals, notably the Profumo affair and the Montesi scandal. His 1964 work Eros Denied was a groundbreaking manifesto of the sexual revolution. Young's 1972 publication Preservation is an important insight of present UK conservation and preservation laws and policies, through the conservation struggles of the late 19th century until the 1968 Planning Act.