The Honourable Sir Anthony George Berry (February 12, 1925 - October 12, 1984) was a UK politician, Conservative MP for the constituency of Enfield Southgate , and a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's government.
Sir Anthony was born in 1925, as a son of newspaper magnate James Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley , and his wife Mary (née Holmes). His aristocratic connections may have played a part in his becoming Treasurer of the Household, but this is a political appointment of a senior Government whip in the Commons.
He married firstly, in 1954, the Hon. Mary Cynthia Burke Roche (born 1934). They had four children, named Alexandra Mary (born 1955), Antonia Ruth (born 1957), Joanna Cynthia (born 1957, twin of Antonia), and Edward Anthony Morys (born 1960). They divorced in 1966. It is perhaps worth noting that Sir Anthony's first wife was the elder sister of the Hon. Frances Ruth Burke-Roche (born 1936), who was to become Countess Spencer and mother of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Sir Anthony married Sarah Anne Clifford-Turner in 1966 and had two more children: George (born 1967), and Sasha Jane (born 1969).
On 12th October 1984, Sir Anthony was killed in the Brighton hotel bombing : a bomb planted in the Grand Hotel in Brighton, during the Conservative Party's conference. He was 59.
In September 1986, Patrick Magee received eight life sentences, but was released from prison in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.
Since Magee's release, Sir Anthony's daughter Jo Tufnell (a mother of three living in North Wales) has become renowned 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 BBC2 on Thursday 13th December 2001. Although she has received some criticism for these meetings, she is regarded by many as a courageous campaigner for peace.
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Last updated: 09-03-2005 18:37:12
