Celebration of 100 sweet years since MP's honour
A 100th anniversary being celebrated this summer will be sweet - as it commemorates an honour awarded to an eminent Salopian for what he did for sugar production.
Sir Beville Stanier is holding a fundraising garden party which will celebrate the centenary that his namesake grandfather, a Shropshire MP, was created a Baronet by Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1917 for organising sugar beet production during the Great War.
And among the guests will be Philip Dunne, who has followed in the footsteps of that early 20th century Sir Beville as Ludlow MP.
"He was a very expert farmer and was given the task of getting the sugar beet industry going in the UK. Apparently during the First World War all our sugar was coming from the Caribbean and the German submarines were knocking off our ships carrying sugar.
"As a result of his success, the Prime Minister gave him a baronetcy, of which I'm now the third holder. My name is exactly the same as my grandfather, Sir Beville Stanier."
However, although they share the same name, today's Sir Beville is known as Billy.
"I believe around the time of my christening somebody thought it was a bit of a mouthful, and I should be given something more common or garden."
Sir Billy lives at Whaddon, between Buckingham and Milton Keynes, and is a leading Conservative, and president of the Buckinghamshire constituency. He also serves on Aylesbury Vale Council.
"I have a fundraising event on my lawn every summer in July. We have a number of eminent politicians as guests, and I was thinking who to get this year and hit upon the name of Philip Dunne - he is MP for Ludlow, as was my grandfather 100 years ago.
"Philip is coming down on July 20. I happened to look up when grandfather was given his baronetcy and he was given it on July 16, 1917, exactly 100 years within the week. So we are calling it a celebration garden party of the 100 years centenary of my grandfather getting his baronetcy."
Sir Beville, of Peplow Hall, Shropshire, had become Newport MP at a by-election in 1908, was re-elected in 1910, and returned unopposed in a second general election held the same year.
However in 1918 he became MP for Ludlow, again being returned unopposed. He was the chairman of the Sugar Beet Growers Society and the Sugar Beet Council, and at the time of his death at the age of 54 in December 1921 was living at The Citadel at Weston-under-Redcastle.
