Godfrey Elton, 1st Baron Elton, was a British historian, academic and Labour Party politician. Having served in the British Army during the First World War, he was elected a fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford in 1919 and appointed a lecturer in modern history by the University of Oxford. In 1934, he entered the House of Lords, having been made a peer by Ramsay MacDonald. He stepped down from his university posts in 1939 and became secretary of the Rhodes Trust.

Thornbury was a county constituency centred on the town of Thornbury in Gloucestershire. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.