Despite growing up amid immense affluence and among the British and American social elite, Paul Channon (Lord Kelvedon), who died on 27 January, 2007, was a dedicated public servant who served under five different Tory leaders.

The 23-year-old Baby of the House of Commons in 1959 went on to represent his constituency until 1997, during which time he took on numerous ministerial jobs with tenacity and patience.

And with a personal fortune estimated at more than £180 million in 1990, Lord Kelvedon lived a charmed life, no doubt being able to bear the tedium of Whitehall by indulging his passions for fine art and exotic properties.

But when he was finally given his chance in the Cabinet, his three years as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and for Transport were benighted by personal and public tragedy.

Henry Paul Guinness Channon was born on 9 October, 1935 in London into a world of dazzling transatlantic privilege, the son of American diarist, Sir Henry “Chips” Channon and Lady Honor Channon, eldest daughter of Rupert Guinness, he spent most of the second world war at the Astors’ family home in upstate New York.

After national service in Cyprus, he went to Christ Church College, Oxford, but aged just 23, he left before he could graduate to become the fourth consecutive member of his family to represent Southend in Parliament, beating off 129 other prospective candidates and a Daily Express anti-nepotism campaign to secure a majority of 8,000 in the 1959 Southend, West by-election.

Immensely well connected, he soon became a parliamentary bag carrier for Richard Wood, Minister of Power, but it would be an astonishing 27 years before he finally took his place at the Cabinet table.

During his years in the semi-wilderness, however, Lord Kelvedon displayed his centre-left credentials by supporting the Bill to end capital punishment, and in the early 1970s, he tasted ministerial office under Edward Heath first as housing minister and then—given his Guinness connections—as Northern Ireland minister.

Within seven months, he was again housing minister, having provoked uproar among Unionists for secretly meeting IRA representatives at his Chelsea home, and after he and a group of fellow Tories denounced Margaret Thatcher’s leadership potential over dinner in 1974, she promptly relegated him to the back benches when she became leader in 1975, allegedly declaring, “There will be no room in my government for that millionaire.”

Following a brief flirtation with membership of the European Parliament, Lord Kelvedon found a place in the Thatcher administration, albeit as the seemingly perennial underling, spending seven years in junior posts at the civil service, trade and industry and transport departments, punctuated briefly but happily with two year’s respite as arts minister, where Lord Kelvedon fought to stop the export and break-up of important collections.

Finally, in 1986, he secured the Trade and Industry portfolio, inheriting the fallout from the Westland helicopter affair and US takeover bids for the British car-making industry, tasks made immeasurably harder by the death of his eldest daughter from a drink and drugs overdose while celebrating the end of her finals at Oxford.

When the Tories won a third term in 1987, he became Transport Secretary, but among small successes such as the channel tunnel scheme, road-building and rail investment, his tenure was dogged by public tragedy, the King’s Cross, Clapham junction, Lockerbie and Kegworth disasters all happened on his watch, and within two years, he was once again on familiar back-bench territory.

Although Lady Thatcher praised his integrity when he was replaced, his decision to fly to Mustique for a holiday just two days after Lockerbie had seemed grossly insensitive to some.

After an unsuccessful attempt to continue another family tradition, this time by becoming Speaker of the House, he channelled his energies diligently as chairman of the transport committee until his elevation to the Lords as Baron Kelvedon in 1997.

Lord Kelvedon was a patient, amiable and efficient minister, whose wealth and upbringing he rarely invoked, save for his office decorations—tiger-skin sofa and black wallpaper in the 70s, followed by some “poor Canalettos” in the 80s.

Indeed, according to another former Southend MP, Sir Teddy Taylor, Lord Kelvedon was, “the one MP who was the perfect gentleman.”