Carrington, Peter Carington, 6th Baron

Carrington, Peter Carington, 6th Baron, 1919–, British politician. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he succeeded to the peerage in 1938. After serving in World War II, he took his seat in the House of Lords, where he held ministerial positions under the Conservative governments of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Edward Heath. These included high commissioner to Australia (1956–59), first lord of the admiralty (1959–63), leader of the House of Lords (1963–64), and secretary of state for defense (1970–74). In the first government of Margaret Thatcher he was foreign secretary (1979–82), where he played a major role in negotiating an end to the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He resigned after the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands. He subsequently served as secretary-general of NATO (1984–88) and until 1992 was a European Community envoy working for peace in the Balkans.