He did it his way

In January, as the then schoolboy editor of the Eton College Chronicle, I wrote to Sir Edward Heath to ask him for an interview for my school magazine. A few days later, a typed letter from Sir Edward arrived through my letterbox. He was flattered, he wrote, to have been asked, and would be delighted to meet me, but he feared that such an interview, despite the Chronicle’s limited readership, would attract undue and unwanted attention to him in the run-up to the general election. We agreed, therefore, to meet in May.

His secretary, when I rang her, told me he was ill. His mobility was poor, but ‘his mind is sharp as a new razor’. She warned me, ‘You can initially have 15 minutes with him. If it goes well, you may have longer — but to be honest I’d be surprised if you can get much out of him at the moment.’