Daniel Finkelstein, in his superb new Notebook in The Times (a miscellany in addition to his regular column, pay wall), notes the allegation in Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher that William Whitelaw was a heavy drinker.
No, I didn’t know that either, and it may not be the most important factor in Thatcher’s seizure of the Conservative leadership in 1975 (some Tory MPs thought Whitelaw unsuited to the leadership for this reason, according to Moore). It was Whitelaw’s refusal to run in the first ballot against Ted Heath, because he thought it would be disloyal, which did for him.
But when I mentioned this to a colleague it turned out that it had been rumoured at the time when Whitelaw, who was a keen shooter, “winged a keeper and simultaneously shot an old friend in the buttocks”, that he had been drinking. He gave up shooting after that.
Photograph: Rex
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