In 1907 he was elected to the London County Council as a Municipal Reformer. From 1918-1919 he served as chairman and was an Alderman of the council from 1922-1934. He served as the vice-chairman of the National Trust during the 1930s, but he declined the chairmanship, because he was not "a great landowner". He placed the Trust's finance committee on a more professional footing; it subsequently fell to his son Mark Norman to chair that committee through the difficult economic circumstances of the 1970s. From 1933 to 1935 he served as vice-chairman of the BBC, and was chairman from 1935 to April, 1939 [1].
Richard Norman (1917-1994) who married an Anglo-Spanish aristocrat, descended from the Bourbon duques de Marchena (Dukes of Marchena) themselves descended morganatically from Spanish kings.
Family connections
Through the Bridgemans, the Normans descended from Ronald Collet Norman and Lady Florence are thus related to several prominent English and Scottish aristocrats including HRH The Duke of Gloucester (whose maternal grandmother was a sister of Lady Florence Norman), the 7th Marquess of Salisbury (whose maternal great-grandmother was another sister), the 9th Duke of Buccleuch (whose paternal grandmother, shared with the Duke of Gloucester, was a sister of Lady Florence), and so forth.