Piers John Shirley Dixon (born 29 December 1928) is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Conservative Party

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 politician.

Dixon was educated at Eton College

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

, Magdalene College, Cambridge

Magdalene College, Cambridge

Magdalene College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary Magdalene...

, and Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

. He worked as a stockbroker.

Dixon contested Brixton

Brixton (UK Parliament constituency)

Brixton was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Brixton district of South London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post system....

 in 1966

United Kingdom general election, 1966

The 1966 United Kingdom general election on 31 March 1966 was called by sitting Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson's decision to call an election turned on the fact that his government, elected a mere 17 months previously in 1964 had an unworkably small majority of only 4 MPs...

. A member until the close of 1971 of the Conservative Monday Club

Conservative Monday Club

The Conservative Monday Club is a British pressure group "on the right-wing" of the Conservative Party.-Overview:...

, he was elected Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) for Truro at the 1970 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1970

The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...

. He was re-elected in February 1974

United Kingdom general election, February 1974

The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party,...

, but lost the seat to the Liberal David Penhaligon

David Penhaligon

David Charles Penhaligon was a British politician from Cornwall who was a Liberal Member of Parliament from October 1974 until his death...

 in the October 1974 general election

United Kingdom general election, October 1974

The United Kingdom general election of October 1974 took place on 10 October 1974 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. It was the second general election of that year and resulted in the Labour Party led by Harold Wilson, winning by a tiny majority of 3 seats.The election of...

, by 464 votes (0.8%). No Conservative MP represented Truro since Dixon's defeat until Sarah Newton

Sarah Newton

Sarah Louise Newton FRSA née Hick is a British Conservative Party politician, who was elected at the 2010 general election as the Member of Parliament for Truro and Falmouth.-Early life:...

's victory over the Liberal Democrats in 2010. Alan Clark

Alan Clark

Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991...

 noted Dixon in his 1983-1992 diaries, writing "when (the Liberals) get stuck in, really stuck in, they are devilish hard to dislodge."

The first of his four wives was the sculptor Edwina Sandys

Edwina Sandys

Edwina Sandys was born 22 December 1938. She is the second child of Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys and Diana Churchill, and a granddaughter of the statesman Sir Winston Churchill. She has been married twice. Her first husband, Piers Dixon, formerly represented Truro as the Conservative...

, a daughter of Duncan Sandys

Duncan Sandys

Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys CH PC was a British politician and a minister in successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s...

 and his first wife Diana Churchill

Diana Churchill

Diana Spencer-Churchill was the eldest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill .- Personal life :...

. They had two sons Mark and Hugo.

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