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“... Until supper time on Thursday, 14 October, when Miss Sara Keays lifted her telephone to summon the Times to her drawing-room, a mere four people in public life had openly censured Mr Cecil Parkinson and suggested he should resign: two Tory MPs, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the Mayor of Potters Bar. Ranged against this lone and motley quartet were the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, most of Fleet Street, 70 Tory MPs, 62 per cent of the British public, Bernard Levin, 90 per cent of telephone callers to Conservative Central Office and a briefcase full of letters from Mr Parkinson’s constituents ...”

“... Lord McAlpine of West Green. There is also a reference to Cecil Parkinson’s affair with Sara Keays which is loathsome enough to bring a blush to the cheek of David Evans. The sparks don’t fly until the last fifth of the book. McAlpine’s main inspiration is deep worship of Margaret Thatcher. ‘In all the time I have known her,’ he ...”

“... betrayal of a pledge can ever be justified, and if so, in what circumstances. One of them, Miss Keays’s book, can be briefly disposed of. In her case the betrayal is twofold. First, the betrayal of a lover by the desertion of her partner, and, secondly, the betrayal by the aggrieved lover of the private story of the romance. Wiser counsels – family ...”

“... Parkinson in the Cabinet following the disclosure of his affair with his former secretary, Miss Sara Keays, was an epic failure. Newspaper enterprise swiftly scuppered the official line (‘the issue of Mr Parkinson’s resignation does not and will not arise’). Again, the bid to diminish, if not effectively hide, the extent of Mrs Thatcher’s eye ...”

“... cooked his goose with some of the stuffier colleagues. And what was the solution chosen by Ms Sara Keays to put her injury before the world? Not a press conference, but a summons to the Times to attend her drawing-room in the country. And, yes, it was a world ...”

“... continued, but this time against ‘legitimate targets’ – against enemies of the Government (Sara Keays perhaps, or Hilda Murrell) – not against the government itself. The security services could now bask in their respectability, which would be sadly compromised if any of the unfortunate behaviour of the Wright gang in the mid-Seventies were ...”