During its eighteen-month gestation period, this book has been through a considerable metamorphosis. It has always been envisaged as a serious publication, its principal purpose being to mark the centenary of the birth, on 9 July 1916, of Edward Richard George Heath – privy counsellor and Knight of the Garter, wartime soldier and peacetime statesman, competitive sailor and talented amateur musician, and one of the most controversial politicians of the post-war era – but the proposal I originally had in mind was for a form of ‘Festschrift’. A collection of essays collected in accordance with such a solidly European tradition would have appealed to its subject, but the quality and volume of material generously submitted by so many friends and colleagues necessitated a fundamental rethink. So the book you hold is rather different from the one originally intended.
The consistent, unyielding vision motivating all the hard work – the driving purpose, if you will – has not been an aspiration to detail, yet again, the already well-documented career of Ted Heath, but rather to capture and vividly evoke the complex, multi-faceted essence of the man – his relentless sense of purpose, his idiosyncratic (and often highly counter-productive) sense of humour, his strengths, quirks, weaknesses and foibles. In short, I wanted to explain what ‘made him tick’.
Peter Walker was a protégé of Sir Edward’s who ran his leadership election campaign in 1965 and stuck by him through thick and thin, willingly accepting the consequent opprobrium as a price worth paying. Even he once said, ‘In the years I have known him, there have been only four or five occasions when I have penetrated his deepest thoughts. He is a very self-contained person and also a fairly shy one.’ So Ted Heath is not the easiest subject for a historian or biographer – even one who knew him well and worked closely with him for five years, as I did.
Around sixty-five people who knew him personally have contributed to this book, each in his or her distinctive voice. The intention behind presenting so much primary material is to enable readers to form their own opinions of Heath, digesting and assimilating the evidence and unlocking the conundrum for themselves.
While this book is not a biography, it certainly does cover all the main stations of his life. Where the contributions of others do not join up neatly, or require illumination or counterpoint, I have filled in the gaps. I have also written a full, first-hand account of my own five-year period running the private office of Sir Edward, or ‘The Boss’, as we called him – including the unforgettable experience of running through his entire life with him, for the purposes of producing his 1998 memoir, The Course of My Life.
I have also, reluctantly and with no little sense of distaste, sought to address the nebulous and, to me, incredible allegations that have been made against Heath in 2015 and 2016, in connection with the supposed abuse of under-age male persons. As I shall make clear, I personally do not believe Heath ever had sexual relations with anyone – and I cannot imagine ever being persuaded otherwise. He seems to have decided, early in life, that he would manage independently and on his own in his personal life – a vow he never appears to have broken.
As this book reveals, in his political life Edward Heath sought always to be analytical and rational; and he possessed a rare gift for cutting incisively through copious briefings and masses of information, to the very heart of the matter. He could therefore appear cold and, to the less thick-skinned of those around him, positively rude. Certainly he struggled to express the softer emotions, but he was capable of great generosity and also of expressing affection to those he loved.
So, here he is – for fans and critics alike – that ‘great lighthouse’ in Roy Jenkins’s memorable phrase – summoned back to life by the recollections of those who knew him best.