Soskice, Sir Frank, Baron Stow Hill

SOSKICE, SIR FRANK, BARON STOW HILL (1902–1979), British politician. Soskice was born in Geneva, the son of DAVID VLADIMIROVICH SOSKICE (1866–1941), a Jewish lawyer and journalist from the Ukraine who was an important liberal activist against the czarist regime and was briefly an official of the Kerensky government. He lived in England for most of the period after 1898. Frank Soskice's mother was a gentile, the niece of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Maddox Brown. Soskice was educated at St. Paul's School and Oxford. He became a barrister in 1926, the same year he became a naturalized British subject. In 1945 he was appointed a KC and was also elected to Parliament as a Labour member, serving until 1966, although briefly losing his seat in 1950 and 1955–56. Upon entering Parliament he was immediately appointed solicitor-general, with a knighthood, and was regarded as an able holder of this post. When Labour returned to power in 1965, Harold *Wilson appointed him to the senior post of home secretary. Soskice, in poor health, was not successful in this position and was moved to the office of Lord Privy Seal, but still with a seat in the cabinet, in 1965. He retired in 1966 and was given a life peerage.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.