Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun

Ronald John McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun, PC, was a British Conservative politician and writer.

Background and education

McNeill was born in Torquay. He was the son of Edmund McNeill, DL, JP and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary. He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886. McNeill was called to the bar in 1888 and started work as editor of The St James's Gazette, as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Political career

Having unsuccessfully contested the seats of West Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen South and Kirkcudbrightshire, McNeill was elected as Unionist Member of Parliament for the St Augustine's division of Kent in 1911. Seven years later he became representative for Canterbury and in 1922 was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a post he held, with a short interval for the first Labour Government of 1924, until 1925.
After serving as Financial Secretary to the Treasury for two years, McNeill was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet in 1927. The same year he was also sworn of the Privy Council and, in November 1927, raised to the peerage as Baron Cushendun of Cushendun in the County of Antrim. Acting Foreign Secretary in 1928 and twice chief British representative to the League of Nations, Lord Cushendun signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact in August that year. He retired from office in 1929.

Cushendun and Glenmona House

From 1910, McNeill resided, when not in London, at Glenmona House in Cushendun, the coastal village in the Glens of Antrim in County Antrim from which he later took his title. He was burnt out of the house in 1922, having a replacement built that was designed by Clough Williams-Ellis. The village also contains buildings designed by Williams-Ellis, built in memory of Lord Cushendun's Cornish wife, Maud, who died in 1925.

Family

In 1884, the future Lord Cushendun married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho, a Cornishwoman and Christian Scientist. They had three daughters: Esther Rose, Loveday Violet, and Mary Morvenna Bolitho. After Elizabeth's death in 1925 he married Catherine Sydney Louisa Margesson in 1930. She survived him, dying in 1939. Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.