Leader of the Liberal Party
The party Grimond inherited from former leader Clement Davies had secured only 2.7% of the vote in the 1955 general election. However, this result represented a modest recovery in the Liberal Party's fortunes compared with its performance in 1951. Under Grimond's leadership, this progress continued. He helped restore the Liberals as a notable political force by the time he stepped down as leader in 1967.
It was during his tenure that the first post-war Liberal revival took place: under Grimond's leadership, the Liberals doubled their seat tally and won historic by-elections at Torrington in 1958 (the first by-election gain by the Liberal Party for 29 years), Orpington in 1962, and Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles in 1965.
In 1961-2, the Liberals almost succeeded in capturing Blackpool North, West Derbyshire and Chippenham from the Conservatives and Paisley and Leicester North East from Labour. Grimond's leadership proved attractive to many young aspiring politicians, including John Pardoe and three future party leaders, David Steel, Paddy Ashdown and Sir Menzies Campbell.
In 1967, having led the party through three general elections, he made way for a younger leader, the charismatic Jeremy Thorpe. In 1976, when Thorpe was forced to resign because of a scandal, Grimond stepped in as interim leader until the election of a replacement, David Steel.
Among other posts, Grimond was a barrister and publisher in the 1930s, an army major during World War II, Secretary of the National Trust for Scotland from 1947 to 1949, and held the Rectorships of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen and the Chancellorship of the University of Kent at Canterbury (elected in 1970). His many books include The Liberal Future (1959, credited with reinvigorating radical liberalism as a coherent modern ideology), The Liberal Challenge (1963), and Memoirs (1979).
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1983 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.
