WHAT DOES JEREMY THINK?

As a young civil servant, Jeremy Heywood's insightful questioning of the status quo pushed him to the centre of political power in this country for more than 25 years. He directly served four Prime Ministers in various roles including the first and only Permanent Secretary of 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet Secretary, and the Head of the Home Civil Service. He was at the centre of every crisis from the early 1990s until 2018, and most of the key meetings. Invariably when faced with a new policy initiative, a Prime Minister's first response would be: 'But what does Jeremy think?' Jeremy worked up until his death, retiring just a few days before he died from lung cancer in October 2018. This book began as a joint effort between Jeremy and his wife Suzanne, working together in the last months of his life and Suzanne completed the work after his death. She captures a remarkable sweep of recent UK political history and the central part played by her late husband - a brilliant product and architect of the UK Civil Service, and arguably the most influential Cabinet Secretary of modern times and his part in making it work better. Here is an individual with a titanic intellect for supreme policy making, draughting and negotiating skills who is only seen on a few occasions in public, usually giving evidence to select committees and Heywood was no exception. The book has been updated with a new chapter in the report of lawyer Nigel Boardman on the Greensill affair, where he shows that Heywood was crucial in admitting the discredited Greensill into the centre of government, apparently blind to the resulting conflict of interest which should have been apparent at the time. 570pp, paperback with colour photos.