Ex-Prime Minister, Lord Home, Dies

Lord Home, the Scottish aristocrat who served briefly as prime minister during a political career that spanned the rise of Nazism to the end of the Cold War, died Monday. He was 92.

Home, who as Sir Alec Douglas-Home was prime minister for a year from October 1963, was the last of the blue bloods to lead Britain’s Conservative Party.

Emerging as leader after secretive consultations among Conservative elders, Home changed the rules to allow legislators to pick the leader - opening the way for his successors, Edward Heath, a carpenter’s son, and Margaret Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter.

“He represented all that was best in his generation,” Thatcher said Monday. “A perfect gentleman who used his great talents in the service of his country and her people.”