One time defense secretary and environment secretary, Michael Heseltine (born 1933) was a key figure in British politics from the 1980s into the mid-1990s, first as a member of the Thatcher governments, then as an alternative Conservative voice to that of then Prime Minister Thatcher, and later as a member of the John Major government.

Michael (Ray Dibdin) Heseltine, having served as a junior and middle rank minister through the government of Edward Heath (1970-1974), became secretary of state for the environment when the Conservative Party returned to power in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher. Later he was secretary of state for defense, but he left the government dramatically, walking out of a Cabinet meeting in January 1986 in protest at her style of running the government. He then became on the backbenches a focus of an alternative Conservatism, preaching what he characterized as a "caring capitalism," taking a more enthusiastically...