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Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

British politician (born 1953)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ285183 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sir Geoffrey Robert Clifton-Brown (born 23 March 1953) is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1992. He has represented North Cotswolds since the 2024 general election, having previously represented Cirencester and Tewkesbury, then The Cotswolds.

Early life and career

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown was born on 23 March 1953 in Cambridge, the eldest of four children of farmer Robert Lawrence Clifton-Brown (1929–2016), of Maltings Farmhouse, Haverhill, Suffolk, a councillor and mayor of St Edmundsbury, Suffolk, and (Florence) Elizabeth Lindsay (1926–2006), granddaughter of Sir Edmund Hoyle Vestey, 1st Baronet. Clifton-Brown is therefore distantly related to the actor Tom Hiddleston, who is Edmund Vestey's great-great-grandson.

He was privately educated, first at Tormore School in Deal, Kent, and then at Eton College. He then studied at the Royal Agricultural College where he qualified as a chartered surveyor in 1975. He began his career as a graduate estate surveyor at the Property Services Agency in Dorchester and, later in 1975, became an investment surveyor with Jones Lang Wootton. He became the vice chairman of the Norfolk North Conservative Association in 1984. He was elected as Constituency Chairman in 1986, a position he held until he resigned in 1991 in order to stand for election as a Conservative candidate.

Parliamentary career

During 1991, Clifton-Brown was selected as the candidate for the then Conservative parliamentary constituency of Cirencester and Tewkesbury, following the retirement of the former Cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Geoffrey Clifton-Brown” as british politician (born 1953). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Geoffrey, Clifton-Brown and British.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 1992, 2024, 1929—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Geoffrey, Clifton-Brown and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Geoffrey Clifton-Brown”, the useful work is to connect “british politician (born 1953)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

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 Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q285183. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1992, 2024 and 1929.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. 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.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Geoffrey Clifton-Brown”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Geoffrey Clifton-Brown primary sources, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown archive and Geoffrey research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. 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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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Geoffrey Clifton-Brown” 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.