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Anthony Howard - Michael Heseltine's early business enterprises (24/41)

3,976 views · Published 22 May 2018 · 6:09 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · Science & Technology

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The prominent British political observer, Anthony Howard (1934-2010) reported on global political issues for over 40 years for 'The Guardian', 'The Sunday Times' and 'The Observer', and was editor of the 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'. He received a CBE in 1997. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2008]

TRANSCRIPT: Michael Heseltine I've known for more than 50 years now. And we remain great friends. Don't see him all that much, I suppose. I see him three or four times a year, that kind of thing. Usually go and stay one weekend a year at his grand house down in… it's actually Northamptonshire, but he likes to think it's in Oxfordshire. It's actually on the Northampton side of the border, Thenford House. Lovely Palladian building.

And, of course, he has a butler and he has, sort of, troupes of servants. It's all very grand. And you have to dress for dinner and all that kind of thing. But I'm very fond of Michael. He's rather like Soames Forsyte, a sort of [The] Man of Property, as one of the books of that Forsyte Saga is called. And I never knew he was going to be a successful politician. Indeed, oddly enough, he was at Oxford, and his great friend at Oxford was a man who later became a Tory MP, too, now dead, Julian Critchley. And I remember thinking at the time that Julian was more likely to be a success in politics than Michael was. He was very good-looking, dark-haired and distinguished, and they'd both been to the same school, Shrewsbury, but I thought Julian might, sort of, prosper in politics more than Michael would. But the one thing I never had any doubt about Michael, that actually is in 'The Isis Idol' I wrote about him when I was up at Oxford, is that he was going to make a lot of money. I said, one day there'll be golden papers, and Michael Heseltine will walk along them, or some rather pompous phrase of that kind, in 'The Isis Idol'. I always knew he was going to have success in business. Why did I know that?

Partly because one of the things that brought us together was that the Oxford Union, in our day, was really ailing. It wasn't doing at all well. And when Michael became treasurer, which was in, I think, the summer term of 1954, called at Oxford the Trinity term, he revolutionised the whole place. He brought in a whole sort of thing of half-crown lunches. He opened a... cellars for dancing, a sort of nightclub. He… membership shot up. He was a real natural entrepreneur, and I saw him do this, and he… you know, the half-crown lunches were a great success. And I think they all were bit of a steal, you know. It was sort of… I think it was a bit of old mish-mash fish that we sort of mocked up as turbot, but it wasn't turbot at all, that kind of thing. I don't know how much Michael knew about that, but I later learned from one of the chefs… or no, a steward there, that this kind of thing had gone on. But anyway, he started making money, and he turned the thing around as a business. So I thought if he can do that, he'll probably be a great success as a businessman.

Of course, his original intention was to become a chartered accountant, and he stuck with that for three or four years, but he had great difficult with the exams. And one of the things about Heseltine that isn't widely understood is he is a bit dyslexic, and he has great difficulty in reading, and therefore he always wanted everything, when he was in the government, the cabinet, to be read to him. And he wouldn't take great documentation. This held him back, I think, a bit with the accountancy exams. But he'd already started making a pile as a landlord. One of the first things he did when he came down from Oxford, where he was a partner of a man, not Clive Labovitch, who became his partner later, but a man called Ian Josephs, who ended up, I think, running a language school in Ramsgate, or something. But anyway, they were co-partners at the time. And Ian Josephs had a fairly wealthy father, and on his 21st birthday, the father said to Ian, who was Jewish, he said, 'What would you like for a present?' And Ian said, 'Dad, what I'd like is I'd like that boarding house that you've been boasting about you've bought at a knockdown price. Why can't I have that?'And I think with slightly ill grace, Josephs' père said 'Alright', but I think he was a bit miffed about it. [...]

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