Lord McAlpine: Respected conservative peer

Dubai: Robert Alistair McAlpine is a retired Scottish politician and author.

He was made a life peer in the 1984 New Year’s Honours list, taking the title Baron McAlpine of West Green — in Hampshire.

Born in May 1942, he is a member of the famous McAlpine construction dynasty — his grandfather, known as ‘Concrete Bob’, Sir Robert McAlpine, having founded the firm.

Now 70 years old, he was once one of the most powerful members of the Conservative Party and a senior and trusted adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

He was sent to boarding school aged just six and reportedly suffered from dyslexia.

After leaving school, he went into the family business, becoming a director of the company aged 21.

He went on to make his fortune from property development in Australia and in the 1960s before founding his own publishing firm.

But he found his true passion in life, politics, and met Thatcher at a dinner party in 1975 which set the course of his career.

He became one of her closest advisers during her time in office from 1979 until 1990.

Passionate about art, he was nominated to the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1980, he served on the Council from 1981 to 1982.

Thatcher made him a life peer for his service which also included a stint as party treasurer, in 1984.

The dedication of his book, The Servant — an update of Machiavelli’s The Prince — says: “To the most magnificent, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1979-1990, from one of her many Servants, who believes she could have been better served.”

He turned his back on the Conservative Party at the 1997 general election, campaigning for Sir James Goldsmith’s eurosceptic Referendum Party, although he returned to the fold some years later.

Recently, he has stepped back from public life, opening a bed-and-breakfast in an old monastery in Puglia, Southern Italy with his third wife.

He ha not sat in the House of Lords since rules on non-domiciled tax changed in 2010.

In 1987, he underwent a seven-hour heart bypass operation, complications from which led to him having a tracheotomy and difficulty speaking.

He has three children, two from his first wife.