His wife,born Elspeth Morton Shand, was made a life peer in her own right as Lady Howe of Idlicote in 2001. She had chaired the Broadcasting Standards Commission.
Because of Howe's apparently mild-mannered personality, Labour MP Denis Healey notoriously compared being attacked by him in the House of Commons to "being savaged by a dead sheep"; nonetheless, his high-profile resignation speech in 1990 is widely thought to have triggered the downfall of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.