Early life and career of Rab Butler (1902–1929)

Richard Austen Butler (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), generally known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative politician. Butler was born in British India to a family of distinguished Cambridge University academics. As a child, his right hand was permanently disabled in a riding accident. He was educated at Marlborough College and at Cambridge, where he was president of the Cambridge Union Society and, after initially reading French and German, graduated with an outstanding first-class degree in History. After graduating, he taught briefly as a Cambridge don and married into the wealthy Courtauld family. Butler was elected to Parliament for Saffron Walden in Essex at the 1929 general election and held the seat until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1965. Butler was born in Attock Khurd, Attock, British India, to Sir Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler of the Indian Civil Service and his wife, Anne Gertrude (née Smith). Butler's mother was the daughter of George Smith, who was Principal of the Doveton Boys College in Calcutta. Butler's paternal family had a long and distinguished association with the University of Cambridge, which dated back to his great-grandfather George Butler. Especially notable were Butler's grand-uncle Henry Montagu Butler (Master of Trinity College and Dean of Gloucester) and Sir Geoffrey G. Butler, a Cambridge historian and Conservative MP for the university, Butler's uncle and a particular early influence on him. Butler's father was a Fellow, and in later life the Master, of Pembroke College. In July 1909, at the age of six, his right arm was broken in three places in a riding accident. The injury was aggravated by a burn from a hot water bottle and an attempt to straighten the arm by hanging weights from it, which left his hand not fully functional. Butler attended Brockhurst preparatory school but refused to attend Harrow, where many of his family had been educated. He failed to win a scholarship to Eton and so he attended Marlborough College.