Diana Josceline Barbara Neave, Baroness Airey of Abingdon (born Diana Josceline Barbara Giffard;[1] 7 July 1919 – 27 November 1992) was a Conservative member of the House of Lords after receiving a life peerage in August 1979.[2]
Diana Giffard was daughter of Thomas Arthur Walter Giffard, MBE, DL, for Staffordshire, of Chillington Hall, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire and his wife Angela Erskine Trollope, elder daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Henry Trollope, 10th Bt.
She married Airey Neave, elder son and first child of Sheffield Airey Neave.[3] They had three children:
At the beginning of the Second World War she worked as a nurse in an RAF hospital. Later she was enrolled by the Foreign Office to carry out work in secret intelligence with the Political Warfare Executive, in particular liaising with the Polish Ministry of Information.[4] Diana Neave was created Baroness Airey of Abingdon, of Abingdon in the County of Oxford, on 6 August 1979, a few months after her husband – a British Conservative Member of Parliament – was killed in an attack by the Irish National Liberation Army using a car-bomb in the Palace of Westminster on 30 March 1979.[1] [3] She was on the governing body of Abingdon School from 1981 to 1987.
She was a trustee of the Imperial War Museum, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Dorneywood Trust and the Stansted Park Foundation. She was President of the Anglo-Polish Conservative Society.[5]
She died in 1992 and is buried in the churchyard with her husband at Hinton Waldrist.[3]
| Coronet: | A coronet of a Baroness |
| Escutcheon: | Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Argent on a Cross Sable five Fleurs-de-lys Or and on a Canton Azure a Lion rampant Or gorge with a Mural Crown Gules (Neave/Airey); 2nd and 3rd, Azure three Stirrups with Leathers two and one Or (Giffard) |
| Supporters: | On either side a Panther rampant and in trian aspect Or spotted of various colours and breathing Flames proper gorged with a Coronet of a Baroness proper and standing on a Grassy Mount growing therefrom a Branch of two Roses Gules barbed and seeded slipped and leaved and two Thistles all proper |
| Motto: | Sola Proba Quae Honesta |