Iain Sproat

Iain MacDonald Sproat ( born November 8, 1938 in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, † 29 September 2011) was a journalist, editor and British politician of the Conservative Party.

Life

Sproat studied after visiting the St Mary 's School in Melrose, whose head teacher was his father, and of Winchester, first at the University of Aix -en- Provence and then English literature at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Following this, he was Associate Editor from the publisher Time & Tide and applied shortly thereafter at a by-election in June 1964 in the constituency of Rutherglen for a seat in the House of Commons, but lost it to the candidate of the Labour Party clearly. After that, he was first editor of the weekly newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, before he was Head of Special Projects at the publisher BPS Publishing thereafter.

He was first elected as a candidate of the Conservative Party in the general election of 18 June 1970 as Member of Parliament in the House of Commons and represented in this until his election defeat on June 9, 1983, Aberdeen South constituency. During this time he was also chairman of the 1975 Parliamentary Friendship Group of the Conservative Party of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. After the election victory of his party in the general election in 1979, he became chairman of the group of MPs from Scotland for his party as well as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in September 1981 in the Department of Commerce for aviation, shipping and tourism.

After retiring from the House of Commons in 1983 subsequent candidacies were unsuccessful, so it was initially advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then the private bank Rothschild.

In the elections of 9 April 1992, he was again elected deputy in the lower house and took this time to May 1, 1997, the interests of the constituency of Harwich. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed by Prime Minister John Major to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for National Heritage and then after a cabinet reshuffle 1995 on the Minister of State and Minister for Sport. In the general election of 1 May 1997 he lost this conservative dominated constituency as the first constituency owner of his party.

Sproat was also active as a publisher. He was known in particular for his published since 1987 series The Cricketers ' Who's Who on England's most famous cricket player. The first five volumes of which he edited five ten-volume English translation of the works of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin won the main prize at the Moscow Book Fair 1999. Moreover, he was temporarily chairman of British European Cultural Federation and the Chief Executive Officer of Oxford University Press.

Publications

• The Cricketers ' Who's Who, 1987, ISBN 978-0-00-218262-1
• The picture life of Edward Heath, 1971, ISBN 0-85166-432-6