Harry Primrose, 6th Earl Of Rosebery

Albert Edward Harry Meyer Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, 2nd Earl of Midlothian, was born on 8 January 1882 at Dalmeny House, located west of Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the son of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1894 to 1895, and Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, a member of the Rothschild family. His siblings included Neil Primrose and Lady Sybil Grant.

He received education at Eton College and later undertook military training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. On 12 February 1902, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Grenadier Guards. During World War I, he served in France from 1914 to 1917 as Camp Commandant and Aide-de-Camp to General Allenby, and later served in Palestine as Allenby’s Military Secretary.

In addition to his military career, Primrose was involved in sports, notably cricket. As Lord Dalmeny, he played two first-class matches for Middlesex in 1902 and served as captain of Surrey County Cricket Club from 1905 to 1907. Over his cricketing career, he participated in 102 matches, scored 3,551 runs with an average of 22.47, including two centuries, with his highest score being 138 against Leicestershire in 1905.

He was also a racehorse owner, achieving wins in significant British flat races, including The Derby with horses Blue Peter and Ocean Swell. His racehorses were bred at his Mentmore and Crafton Studs.

Politically, Primrose was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Edinburghshire (Midlothian) in the 1906 general election, a seat in the Scottish region historically associated with his family’s landholdings. He served in Parliament until January 1910 and was known as Lord Dalmeny during this period. Notably, he was among nearly 400 Liberal MPs elected in the 1906 landslide. Upon his father's death in 1929, he inherited the titles of 6th Earl of Rosebery and 2nd Earl of Midlothian, becoming a member of the House of Lords.

In 1929, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Midlothian, a position he held until 1964. In 1938, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with proposers including Hugh Macmillan and Sir Thomas Henry Holland. During the Second World War, in February 1941, he was appointed Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence in Scotland.

In the post-war period, he was appointed to the Privy Council in 1945 upon Winston Churchill’s formation of a caretaker government. He was briefly the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1945, serving from May to July. During this tenure, he reportedly remarked, "Well. I didn't make a bad job of this, did I? Didn't have the time," reflecting on his short period in the role.

In 1947, he was created a Knight of the Order of the Thistle by King George VI. He served as President of the National Liberal Party from 1945 to 1957 and was also President of the Scottish conservation organization the Cockburn Association from 1951 to 1974. Additionally, he was appointed Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland in 1952.

Primrose's personal life included two marriages. In 1909, he married Dorothy Alice Margaret Augusta Grosvenor, daughter of Lord Henry George Grosvenor. They had two children before their divorce in 1919: Archibald Ronald Primrose, Lord Dalmeny (1910–1931), and Lady Helen Dorothy Primrose (1913–1998). In 1924, he married Dame Eva Isabel Marian Strutt, daughter of Henry Bruce, 2nd Baron Aberdare. They had two children, with only Neil Archibald Primrose surviving past infancy: Neil Archibald Primrose, who became the 7th Earl of Rosebery, and Lady Mary Primrose, who died at birth in 1935.

Albert Primrose died at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire on 31 May 1974. He was succeeded in his titles by his son, Neil.