Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid

Major Sir Henry Joseph d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet, DSO, MC, TD, DL (10 June 1909 – 11 December 1976), sometimes known as Harry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, was a British army officer, company director and politician.

Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Bt.

The eldest son of Sir Osmond d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 1st Baronet, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid went to Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford. On the death of his father in 1940, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid inherited Somerhill House near Tonbridge, Kent.[1] He joined the Royal West Kent Regiment and the 53rd Reconnaissance Regiment, Reconnaissance Corps and was twice mentioned in dispatches. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross in 1945.

Following the Second World War, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid left the army and became a member of Kent County Council from 1946 to 1953. He was made a Freeman of the City of London and became a Justice of the Peace, Deputy Lieutenant (1949) and High Sheriff of Kent for 1953.[2] His business career as a banker and bullion broker was marked by being Chairman of the Anglo-Israel Bank from 1961, and Chairman of Pergamon Press from 1969 to 1971.

At the 1955 general election, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Walsall South. He was recruited by Duncan Sandys, then Minister of Housing, to be his Parliamentary Private Secretary but held the post for only a year.

Following the 1970 general election, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was joined in the House of Commons by his younger brother James who won the nearby seat of Lichfield and Tamworth. In that Parliament, Henry served as Chairman of the Select Committee on Nationalized Industries and of that on Public Expenditure. In 1973 he was appointed a member of the Horserace Totalisator Board. He stood down from Parliament at the February 1974 general election.

Following the death of his 21 year old daughter Sarah at sea in 1963, Sir Henry commissioned a stained glass window at eighteenth century All Saints' Church, Tudeley. It was designed by the eminent artist Marc Chagall, and when it was installed in 1967, Chagall was so inspired by the effect that he committed to re-making the other eleven windows between 1969 and 1985.