Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby
British politician (1935-2018)
Bernard Harold Ian Halley Stewart, Baron Stewartby, (10 August 1935 – 3 March 2018) was a British Conservative Party politician and numismatist. He was the Member of Parliament for Hitchin from February 1974 to 1983, and for North Hertfordshire from 1983 to 1992. He sat in the House of Lords from 1992 to 2015.
Early life
Stewart was the son of Harold Charles Stewart FRSE and Dorothy Irene Lowen, and was named after his grandfather, Bernard Halley Stewart.
He was educated at Haileybury College and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class degree in the Classical Tripos; he was made an honorary fellow of the college in 1994.
Political career
Stewart contested Hammersmith North at the 1970 general election, being beaten by Frank Tomney of the Labour Party. He was Member of Parliament for Hitchin from February 1974 to 1983, and for North Hertfordshire from 1983 until he stood down in 1992. He served as junior minister for Defence Procurement, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Minister for the Armed Forces.
House of Lords
After he left the House of Commons, Stewart was created a life peer as Baron Stewartby, of Portmoak in the District of Perth and Kinross on 20 July 1992. He sat in the House of Lords until his retirement on 12 November 2015.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby” is british politician (1935-2018). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stewart, Baron and Stewartby, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “british politician (1935-2018)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1474995. VIAF identifies the subject as 62628. The Library of Congress control number is n86053045. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2018, 1974 and 1983.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby primary sources, Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby archive and Stewart research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Ian Stewart, Baron Stewartby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.