Norman St John-Stevas
Chair
- Prizes judged
Norman St John-Stevas was one of the more colourful politicians of the age, a man who would sprinkle his conversations with Latin and mispronounce words to signal his fealty to earlier times.
St John-Stevas entered Parliament as a Conservative after training for the priesthood and then pursuing distinguished academic and legal careers. In the latter he specialised in the laws around obscenity.
He served as Minister for the Arts under both Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher and was elevated to the Lords in 1987. A collector of titles, he added Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission (in which role he objected to the Millennium Wheel) to his roster, as well as Grand Bailiff for England and Wales of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus.