In a letter published in The Spectator on 20 June, Alistair Lexden, a former Deputy Director of the Conservative Research Department, recalled the circumstances in which David Cameron and Edward Llewellyn, now his influential Chief of Staff, began their political careers.
Sir: David Cameron and Edward Llewellyn did not begin their happy days together in the Conservative Research Department ‘more than 30 years ago’, as James Forsyth asserts (Politics, 13 June). It was in 1985 that Llewellyn, then an Oxford undergraduate, decided that he wanted to join the Department, having helped me edit a collection of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches (the unfortunate volume contained an error and she disowned it). Nevertheless, when he was appointed in early 1988 he soon made his mark with Mrs T in the most testing of all briefing assignments, Europe. Cameron, who arrived a few months later, made no impression on her, looking completely blank when she asked him for the jobless figures (he was the Department’s employment desk officer at the time). Llewellyn seemed the more ambitious of the two. No one could then have predicted their future partnership, or the shape of it.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1