Background
Ganzoni was the only son of Sir Francis Ganzoni, a barrister and Conservative Member of Parliament for Ipswich who was created Baron Belstead in 1938, and his wife Gwendolen Gertrude Turner, daughter of Arthur Turner, of Ipswich.
Ganzoni was the only son of Sir Francis Ganzoni, a barrister and Conservative Member of Parliament for Ipswich who was created Baron Belstead in 1938, and his wife Gwendolen Gertrude Turner, daughter of Arthur Turner, of Ipswich.
Christ Church; Eton College.
He went to Eton before reading history at Christ Church, Oxford. Belstead showed little interest in politics at first, and waited six years after succeeding to the peerage on his father"s death in 1958 before making his maiden speech. In 1970 Edward Heath appointed him to become Parliamentary Under-Secretary to Margaret Thatcher at the Department of Education and Science, he was moved in the same rank to the Northern Ireland Office three years later.
When Margaret Thatcher led the Tories back to power in 1979, she sent him to the Home Office.
He was then made Minister at the Foreign Office when Lord Carrington and his team resigned after the Falklands invasion. He next moved to the Ministry of Fisheries and Food, and went back to the Education Department again before becoming Deputy Leader to William Whitelaw as Leader of the House of Lords.
He succeeded Whitelaw in that post in 1988. After losing his Cabinet seat in 1990 he became Paymaster-General and Northern Ireland Minister under John Major, retiring from the Government to become Chairman of the Parole Board in 1992.
In 1983, he was sworn of the Privy Council.
After the House of Lords Acting 1999 removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, he was created a life peer (an honour given to all former Leaders of the House of Lords) as Baron Ganzoni, of Ipswich in the County of Suffolk. He also gave his name to the new "Belstead Centre" at Woodbridge School.