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Edward Richard George Heath was born in Broadstairs, Kent, at the height of the First World War, to a lower middle class family. His mother, Edith, would remain the woman he was closest to for the rest of his life.

A grammar schoolboy and talented musician, he won an organ scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, before graduating in PPE on the eve of the Second World War in 1939 and enlisting.

^{Queen Elizabeth II and Edward Heath (The Telegraph)}

His first biographer, John Campbell, reports that he found nothing to suggest he was gay “except for the faintest unsubstantiated rumour of an incident at the beginning of the war”.

Sir Edward entered Parliament in 1950 for the seat of Bexley in Kent, a constituency he would serve under various redrawn boundaries for the next 51 years.

Brian Coleman, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, would go on to state – without providing evidence – that, during an MI5 vetting in 1955 prior to being granted ministerial office, Sir Edward was warned to stop cruising for sex in public lavatories.

Was it this which persuaded Sir Edward to suppress his homosexuality? As late as 1979, a full four years after he was forced out of the Conservative leadership by the late Baroness Thatcher, he would have watched with alarm as Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, was prosecuted at the Old Bailey over a bizarre plot to allegedly murder his male lover. Thorpe was acquitted but the scandal cost him his career.

^{Jeremy Thorpe flanked by Edward Heath and Harold Wilson at Westminster Abbey in 1970 (HULTON ARCHIVE)}

Sir Edward had his own brush with scandal earlier in the 1970s, when a book by a Cold War spy claimed he was the target of an attempted honeytrap in the 1950s, in which the Czechoslovakian secret service planned to invite him to Prague, where he was to be seduced and blackmailed by a man. Sir Edward turned the invitation down, and the whole incident was played down.

There was one lasting repercussion however as the satirical magazine Private Eye began referring to him as “Sailor Ted,” a pun on his love of yachting and perceived homosexuality: sailor in some circles was a term for a gay man.

^{Edward Heath with Margaret Thatcher (PA)}

Lady Thatcher certainly thought that her predecessor was gay. In his biography, Charles Moore offers as evidence a note written in 1976 by Bill Deedes, at the time editor of this newspaper: “M. seems convinced TH is a homosexual. (Women have more accurate instincts than we.) I said charitably: ‘an instinct sublimated in boats’.”

Others were also convinced by his manner alone that Sir Edward was gay. In his book Tory Pride and Prejudice, about homosexuality and the Conservative Party, Michael McManus wrote: “The author of this book worked for Sir Edward Heath between 1995 and 2000 and was left in no doubt whatsoever that Heath was a gay man who had sacrificed his personal life to his political career, exercising iron self-control and living a celibate existence as he climbed the ‘greasy pole’ of preferment.”

A third tome, No Make-up by Jeremy Norman, the gay entrepreneur, paints a sympathetic portrait of Sir Edward’s life. Mr Norman believes he and his partner were sought out after the latter did some interior design work on his 14th century, grade II listed home, Arundells, facing Salisbury Cathedral, precisely because Sir Edward craved the company of two men in a committed relationship.

"How did we know Ted was gay?" he wrote. “It’s called 'gaydar,' the sixth sense that’s made up of gesture, looks and a list of characteristics common in gay men.

^{Edward Heath at the helm of Morning Cloud}

“I believe Ted took a conscious decision to sublimate his sexuality into his politics and personal ambition. He knew only too well that a sex life and high office were incompatible.

“He was not going to ruin his career like Jeremy Thorpe and many other after him were to do.”

Another biographer, Philip Ziegler, considered Sir Edward “sexless,” but Matthew Parris, the commentator and former MP, claims he detected a “ twinkle in Ted’s eye” when, dressed in motorcycle leathers, he escorted him around his constituency.

Just two women have been linked to Sir Edward in any serious way. Childhood friend Kay Raven became tired of the platonic nature of their relationship and wed someone else in 1950. Musician Moura Lympany claimed in 1998 that she was approached by a supporter of then Prime Minister in the 1970s and implored to marry him. She agreed to accept a theoretical proposal, despite having enjoyed no greater physical contact with Sir Edward than an arm around the shoulders, but none came.

What more do we know of Sir Edward and his views on sexuality? In 1998, at the age of 82 and three years before he left Parliament, he was one of just 17 Conservative MPs to vote in favour of lowering the legal age of consent for homosexual sex to 16.

Why didn’t he do more to support gay rights? Mr Norman put the question to him directly. He later told Pink News: “We often discussed gay issues such as the age of consent.

^{Edward Heath conducts his last Christmas carol concert with the Bexley Music Centre Orchestra at the Crook Log Sports Centre, Bexley (PA)}

“Like many closeted men, he was seldom brave enough to vote for what in his heart he believed.”

Many of those close to Sir Edward, and some observers from afar, believe that a constant drive to suppress his true nature as a homosexual explains his apparent unhappiness and difficulties relating to women including Lady Thatcher, who he shunned in a 25-year-long campaign which became known as the Incredible Sulk.

We may never know whether his gruff exterior hid a thwarted soul made miserable by his inability to pursue love with those he found himself attracted to. Or if his ill-temper concealed much darker demons.