Geoffrey Howe, 1926 – 2015: An advocate who believed

Geoffrey Howe, the former Conservative chancellor, has died aged 88. Lord Howe was Margaret Thatcher’s longest serving cabinet minister and chancellor from 1979 to 1983. The following profile of him, titled ‘Sir Geoffrey Howe: An advocate who believes’ appeared in The Spectator on 20 July 1973, soon after he had reached the Cabinet. When Sir Geoffrey Howe, said to be the most brilliant man in the Cabinet, appears at the dispatch box or on television, his eyes look through his owlish spectacles not out but down, and he talks rapidly in a cultured undertone, more or less in the same hurried, dedicated way he smokes cigarettes — constantly. Slightly over-plump, he is a well of nervous energy, and indefatigible. He stopped, once, about midnight, to talk to, and’ have one drink with, a chatty group at a party conference; sent them to bed, exhausted, at four a.m.; and re-appeared himself at eight, fresh, spruce and eager for the fray.