Robert Hamilton Bernays (6 May 1902 – 23 January 1945) was a Liberal Party, and later Liberal National politician in the United Kingdom.

Bernays was the son of a north London clergyman. He was educated at Rossall School and Worcester College, Oxford where he was president of the Union in 1925. After university he became a journalist on the Daily News and stayed with the profession until entering government.

He stood for Parliament as a Liberal at Rugby in 1929 general election without success but, following the success of his book about Mahatma Gandhi, the Naked Fakir, he was adopted as Liberal candidate for Bristol North at the 1931 general election, and was elected with a 13,000 vote majority, defeating the Labour MP Walter Ayles. When the Liberal Party left Ramsay MacDonald's National Government in November 1933, Bernays remained on the government benches, with the Liberal National Party MPs. He was re-elected at the 1935 general election as a Liberal, and joined the Liberal Nationals in 1936.

When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister in May 1937, Bernays was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health in the National Government. He moved in 1939 to become Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, and held that post until he left government when Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister in May 1940.

He was also a very close friend of the writer and National Labour M.P. Harold Nicolson, and appears frequently in the latter's diaries. This has led to suggestions that they were actually involved in a discreet homosexual relationship.^{[citation needed]} Previously the Duke of Westminster had reported that Bernays had been a lover of the then leader of the Liberal Party, Lord Beauchamp, on a 1930 trip to Australia. Whatever the truth of these rumours, Bernays married Nancy Britton, the daughter of George Bryant Britton (M.P. Bristol East from 1918 to 1922) in 1942 and they had two sons.

Bernays was commissioned as a subaltern into the Movement Control Section of the Royal Engineers in January 1943. When he died in a plane crash in January 1945^[1], no by-election was called, and the Bristol North seat remained vacant until the 1945 general election, when it was won by the Labour candidate William Coldrick.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd edition ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X. 
• Nick Smart, entry on Bernays in Brack et al. (eds.) Dictionary of Liberal Biography, Politico's, 1998
• Nick Smart (ed.) The Diaries and Letters of Robert Bernays, 1932-39: An Insider's Account of the House of Commons; Edwin Mellen, 1996
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page