Career
He was one of the founders of the Anglo German Parliamentary Group, which promoted good relations with the German Parliament. He instigated the annual conferences with German Parliamentarians, the first conference being held at his Hertfordshire home. Rost"s parents, Friedrich Rosenstiel and Elisabeth Merz, were a mixed marriage German Jew and Lutheran living in Berlin during the Nazi era.
Their marriage was annulled and they escaped to the United Kingdom in 1937 before the international border was closed to Jews.
Fred Rosenstiel was the economics editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung in Berlin. He later left for New York, but the family was unable to follow him.
Rost was educated at various schools finishing in the VIth form at Aylesbury Grammar School and at Birmingham University where he read Geography. Before entering Parliament, he was a stockbroker, lecturer and financial journalist.
Rost unsuccessfully contested the safe Labour constituency of Sunderland North at the 1966 general election, and at the 1970 general election he was elected as Member of Parliament for the previously Labour-held seat of South East Derbyshire.
He held that seat until the constituency was abolished for the 1983 general election, when he was returned to the House of Commons for the new Erewash. He retired from Parliament at the 1992 election. Peter Rost"s autobiography "Weimar to Westminster" was published in November 2010 by Dynasty Press, London.
Rost was portrayed by Julian Firth in the 2004 British Broadcasting Corporation production of The Alan Clark Diaries.
Peter Rost"s main interest in Parliament was in "Energy". He constantly bemoaned the loss of heat up the cooling towers of the United Kingdom power stations and actively promoted district heating schemes.
In the 1970s he warned of the wasteful use of Gas for power production, wasting the precious North Sea assets.
