William Douglas-Home; Playwright

William Douglas-Home, whose lighthearted comedies included the perennially popular “The Chiltern Comedies” but whose life involved a dramatic court-martial for what he considered a moral act, has died.

Douglas-Home, who refused to participate in the bombing of the French port of Le Havre during World War II, died Monday, according to a niece, Caroline Douglas-Home. He was 80.

Descendant of an aristocratic family, the younger brother of former British Prime Minister Alec Home died of heart failure at his home near Winchester, about 50 miles southwest of London.

(Alec Home had renounced his hereditary earldom to become Conservative prime minister in 1963.)

William Douglas-Home’s plays, mostly comedies that drew heavily on his aristocratic background, included “The Reluctant Debutante” (1955), “The Drawing Room Tragedy” (1963), “The Secretary Bird” (1968), “Lloyd George Knew My Father” (1972), “The Editor Regrets” (1978) and “Portraits” (1987).

Among the earliest was “The Chiltern Hundreds,” a 1947 affectionate portrayal of the peculiar members of an upper-class family trying to cope with the social and political metamorphoses of modern England.

As a captain in the Royal Armored Corps, Douglas-Home had been jailed for a year for refusing orders to take part in the bombardment of Le Havre because thousands of French civilians were in the German-occupied city.

More than 2,000 French died in the five-hour bombardment on Sept. 8, 1944.