Julian Critchey, a Tory M.P., is fond of telling about the night he dined with fellow classmate Michael Heseltine at Oxford in 1952. Scribbling on the back of an envelope, Heseltine listed his ambitions for the second half of the 20th century. Under the 1990s he wrote, "No. 10."
Born into a middle-class Welsh family, Heseltine studied accounting after Oxford and then went into property development and publishing, amassing a fortune worth more than (pounds)50 million. Elected to Parliament in 1966, he held various non-Cabinet posts under Edward Heath. When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she appointed Heseltine Environment...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
