would never have pushed some cause that he believed to be wrong because somebody had done him a favour, but if people chose to lavish their gifts upon him he was quite ready to take advantage of it. One of the things that most vexed him when he was Prime Minister was what he saw as the unreasonable insistence of the Treasury that all the silver salvers, Ming vases and cases of champagne thrust upon him by foreign dignitaries must be declared and, if retained, paid for. Once his pps, Tim Kitson, remembers him hiding an obviously very valuable ivory model of a dhow, presented to him by Y. K. Pao, the Hong Kong millionaire, as a reward for launching a ship, in case it was spotted by one of his private secretaries and impounded on behalf of the authorities.9
Sara Morrison, though no plutocrat, embodied many of the assets that he thought most desirable. A daughter of Viscount Long and Laura, Duchess of Marlborough, she was grand enough to satisfy any criteria. He met her at Islay, the Scottish retreat of her father-in-law, John Morrison, chairman of the 1922 Committee and the future Lord Margadale. Her husband, Charles Morrison, was also to become an MP, and both the Morrisons were strong supporters of Heath. Sara was as politically conscious as either of them and a great deal more intelligent; born twenty years later she would have been among the leaders of the Tory Party. She was not in the least in awe of Heath, obviously enjoyed his company, told him, with sometimes alarming frankness, when she thought he was making a mistake, made him laugh, and, like Araminta Aldington and Nancy-Joan Seligman, was undiscomfited when he sulked or behaved with a rudeness which would have upset anybody with less self-confidence. She was to become closer to him than any woman since his mother – not romantically or even sentimentally attached but with a real affection and loyalty that endured in spite of all the vicissitudes that from time to time assailed them.
The Aldingtons, the Morrisons, lived in a world in which Heath knew he did not belong. He never wanted to join it but he was happy to indulge in the attractions of gracious living. His frequent stays in Brussels, too, taught him expensive habits. He enjoyed eating in the most sumptuous restaurants, preferred malts to other whiskies, champagne to other wines, Dom Perignon to other champagnes. He had a large appetite and a penchant for sweet things: when he had tea with the Cromers in the South of France he seized the largest pink éclair; when he was staying at the embassy in Washington, Lady Henderson put a large box of chocolates in his room. By the next morning all were gone.10 He began to spend more money on his clothes; he bought a better car; proposed by Harold Macmillan and seconded by Michael Adeane, he joined the Beefsteak Club. ‘I have known him for more than ten years,’ wrote Adeane in his letter of support, ‘have the highest regard for him as a friend and companion and am sure those members who don’t know him already will find, if he is elected, that they have made a most agreeable addition to their number.’11
But the most significant change to Heath’s way of life came in July 1963 when he moved from his mean rooms in Petty France to chambers in Albany, Piccadilly – for a sedate bachelor, probably the most eligible address in London. The main house had been built for the first Viscount Melbourne in the 1770s; in 1802 Henry Holland added a long walkway at the back lined with bachelor apartments. It had at times provided a London retreat for Lord Brougham, Palmerston, Byron, W. E. Gladstone, Macaulay, not to mention the fictional but hardly less celebrated Raffles. With Eric Roll, Pierson Dixon and a host of other dignitaries already installed there, Heath would have no shortage of eligible company: it provided status, silence, seclusion, instant access to the heart of London and, if he felt so inclined, which he rarely did, a brisk fifteen-minute walk to the House of Commons. Sets of rooms rarely came on the market and Heath had been on the waiting list for thirteen years when the death of Clifford Bax, brother of the composer Arnold, freed F2 Albany. Heath secured a seven-year lease for a remarkably reasonable £677 per annum. He at once called in the interior designer Jo Patrick and had his rooms decorated in a style that was assertively modern yet classically restrained.
The newspaper magnate Cecil King lunched there on several occasions and found the flat ‘a luxurious one, with many good prints of soldiers in various uniforms, and he had acquired some excellent white porcelain horses depicting various manoeuvres of the horses in the Spanish Riding School’.12 This was only the nucleus of what was becoming a distinguished collection of ceramics and modern paintings and drawings. Through shrewd buying and, still more, the generosity of friends, Heath was soon able to embellish his rooms with an Augustus John drawing, the first of a series of John Piper paintings, a Picasso lithograph and, in pride of place, two landscapes by Winston Churchill. For Heath the most important item in the flat was the Steinway grand piano. In 1963, as a consolation price for the failure of the negotiations in Brussels, the city of Aachen awarded him the Charlemagne Prize for ‘encouraging international understanding and cooperation in the European sphere’. The only Briton who had received it before was Churchill. The prize was worth £450 and Heath used the money to buy a piano which would both give him something of quality to play on and suitably grace his new home.
With his rooms decorated to his satisfaction, Heath began to entertain. He was, in general, a good host and an appalling guest. At dinner in other people’s houses he was apt to relapse into morose silence or completely ignore the woman next to him and talk across her to the nearest man. Many hostesses have testified to his unreadiness to make the slightest contribution to the success of a party. Even at home he eschewed small talk and sometimes paid scant attention to guests who did not secure his interest. But he was lavish where food and wine were concerned and was usually jovial; not necessarily providing a relaxed or comfortable experience but at least making the guests feel that they were welcome. In Albany he did not often entertain guests for meals but frequently for drinks. His policy was never to ask a husband without his wife or vice versa; he cultivated assiduously every shade of opinion in the party and continued to invite the most inveterate right-wingers or bigoted Europhobes even though he can have derived little satisfaction from their company. Though he was determined that everything in Albany should be of the highest quality – whether in the vintage of the wines or the elegance of the furnishings – he never missed a chance to economise. His old friend and commanding officer, George Chadd, was now dealing in carpets: Heath expected him to provide the best for his new flat, but only at a substantial discount. Life was more expensive for Heath once he was living in Albany but he still contrived to live within his income and even to add to his savings.
Privately, Heath had coveted the job of Foreign Secretary. Harold Macmillan had told Home that he thought Heath was the obvious man for the job, and, other things being equal, the new Prime Minister would probably have taken the advice. Douglas-Home felt, however, that he must offer the twice-rejected Butler any post he wanted, and the Foreign Office was his choice. Instead Heath was given the job he had hoped for four years before: President of the Board of Trade. Regional development was one of his particular interests and he asked that it should be added to his portfolio; his full title was therefore Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development (the order being dictated by the need to avoid the new minister being known as TIRD). It was a well-run and powerful department, ranking among the more important in the hierarchy even before the new responsibilities were added. The Permanent Under Secretary, Richard Powell, was by nature cautious and conservative, but unlike certain other Whitehall mandarins he saw his responsibility as being loyally to support his minister, not to outwit or obstruct him. The only disagreeable element was provided by the Minister of State, Edward du Cann. Du Cann was everything Heath was not: smooth, unctuous, habitually concealing his true feelings under a cloak of bland amiability. ‘By taste, habit and disposition he was an intriguer,’ wrote the journalist Hugo Young. Heath disliked him from the start and, unusually, admitted the fact in his memoirs. His ‘ingratiating manner immediately led me to mistrust him’, wrote Heath – a comment no doubt coloured by the role that du Cann was to play in Heath’s downfall twelve years later.13
It was quickly made clear that in Heath’s view, and it seemed in the view of Douglas-Home as well, the Board of Trade was to play an enlarged and invigorated role in the regeneration of industry and the British economy. One of his first important steps was