Lord Carrington was Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary when the Argentinians invaded the Falklands in 1982. Absent on an official visit to Israel, he resigned his position. It was, he said, a point of honour. Was this though merely the sentiment of a Tory grandee who could easily afford points of honour? The descendant of a famous banking family and recipient of the Military Cross in World War II, Carrington was a minister in every Conservative government from Churchill till Thatcher, holding important positions as Defence Secretary, Agriculture Minister, Energy Secretary and Foreign Secretary. He was also Chairman of the Conservative Party, and in many respects appeared an archetypal Tory. Yet he disliked the party, claiming later in life not even to be a member, and had a fiercely independent streak - he once told Lady Thatcher that if she designed British Middle East policy to protect her majority in her largely Jewish constituency, she could look for another Foreign Secretary. Carrington's cv was almost too full for one man: soldier, farmer, banker, politician, Chairman of the V & A and of Christie's, Secretary-General of NATO, fixer of the Rhodesian conflict for which he received Tory hate mail for the rest of his life, and member of Henry Kissinger's international political advisory group. All this was perhaps fitting for the sixth hereditary baron of one of Britain's great aristocratic dynasties.

The first Carrington had been Pitt the Younger's banker; the third had put an actress in the bed of the virgin Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. Yet there were occasions - quite a few of them - when the perfectly designed destiny faltered. Carrington was forced to offer his resignation to Churchill for bad judgement over the Crichel Down Affair. As Navy Minister, he was caught in the glare of a spy ring, and as Defence Secretary was kept out of the loop of the military operation which culminated in the tragedy of Bloody Sunday. And there were accusations that his easy-going manner had failed to appreciate the Argentinian threat to the Falklands. Margaret Thatcher had said that there was something innately reassuring about walking into a room where Carrington stood. Christopher Lee's full biography, written with the consent of its subject but without his having read it, paints a vivid portrait of a dynasty, an age and above all a major public figure who was perhaps the last Whig in British institutional and political life.