For nearly 16 years Douglas Hurd was at the heart of the British government as a minister. Serving under three consecutive Prime Ministers, he was involved in all major policy decisions of the day. In this authorised biography, Mark Stuart traces the career of the politician who was successively Northern Ireland Secretary, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. The author has had full access to Hurd's diaries and they give an insight into the premiership of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major and to his contemporaries both in British government and on the world stage. The biography reveals evidence on the Thatcher and Major years. There is the revelation that Hurd's instincts after Hillsborough were that there had been one police disaster, possibly two; that senior Cabinet ministers drafted Mrs Thatcher's crucial speech on Westland while she waited upstairs, and the private tale of John Major's progressive loss of faith in human nature after the ERM failure.