Evelyn Hester Blois (1915-1999)

Evelyn Hester "Eve" Macleod, Baroness Macleod of Borve (19 February 1915 –17 November 1999) was a British public servant.

Born Evelyn Hester Blois, she was the eldest daughter of Revd. Gervase Blois (1881-1961) (rector of Hanbury, Worcestershire and youngest son of Sir John Blois, 8th Baronet) and his wife, Hester (youngest daughter of Herbert Pakington, 3rd Baron Hampton). She was educated at Lawnside boarding-school in Great Malvern, was presented as a debutante at court and played tennis for Worcestershire.

On 3 July 1937, she married Mervyn Charles Mason (1907–1940), second son of Alwyne Mason of Foxley Manor, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. During World War II, she worked for the London ambulance service and her husband was a Lieutenant in the Pioneer Corps. In 1940, he was killed after his ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland and she later married the future politician, Iain Norman Macleod, a member of the branch of the Macleods of Pabbay and Uig.

In 1952, Macleod was struck by meningitis and polio and was subsequently paralysed in one leg, but managed to walk with the aid of sticks. When her husband was Secretary of State for the Colonies, she was involved in entertaining various conference delegates. She was a magistrate, founder chairwoman (later president) of the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends (renamed Attend since 2006) and co-founder of Crisis at Christmas in 1967. After her husband died in 1970, she accepted (on the recommendation of Edward Heath) a life peerage as Baroness Macleod of Borve, a title which her husband had said he would take if ever he were elevated to the Peerage. In the House of Lords, she spoke on penal policy and the defence of widows' pensions. In 1976, she launched the National Association of Widows. From 1972-5 she was a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and from 1972-7 she was the first chairwoman of the National Gas Consumers' Council. She died in 1999, survived by her two children, Torquil and Diana.