Lady Suzanne Heywood and Lords Meghnad Desai and Norman Lamont join John Orchard, OMFIF’s chief executive officer, to discuss her book on her late husband, What Does Jeremy Think?: Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain. The book, as much a moving biography as it is an exploration of the machinery at the heart of the British government, covers Jeremy’s time with four prime ministers, as principal private secretary, cabinet secretary, Downing Street permanent secretary and head of the home civil service. Jeremy’s career spanned from the exchange rate mechanism crisis, when he was at Lord Lamont’s side as PPS, through to the fraught Brexit negotiations which dragged on past his untimely passing. Suzanne reflects on these and other major events which dominated her home life as much as they did UK political history and considers what they tell us about how the UK state functions.
