After a classic education and diplomatic career, Douglas Hurd (born 1930) turned to English Conservative Party politics. He became home secretary in 1985 and, under Margaret Thatcher (and later John Major), foreign secretary of Great Britain in 1989.

No prominent Briton since Benjamin Disraeli has so successfully combined careers in Conservative Party politics and novel-writing as Douglas Hurd. Hurd also shares with Disraeli a romantic fascination for the workings of politics and the conduct of foreign affairs, and, like Disraeli, has written cleverly about both. Unlike Disraeli, however, Hurd was never an outsider to the British political elite; indeed, his background, education, and career molded him into an almost archetypal English parliamentary gentleman.

Born on March 8, 1930, in Marlborough, England, Hurd was the eldest son of Sir Anthony (later Baron) Hurd and his wife Stephanie. Anthony Hurd pursued a farming career during Douglas' boyhood and wrote on agricultural developments for the London...