The main lesson perhaps is that an incumbent leader needs an overwhelming majority in order to silence his or her critics, and bring the Party back under reasonably firm control.

Alistair Lexden has just published booklets on the two Conservative leaders who dominated British politics between the two world wars.

Over recent months Alistair Lexden has been making the case for an independent review of the investigation conducted by the Wiltshire police, known as Operation Conifer, into allegations of child sex abuse by Sir Edward Heath.

For years Alistair Lexden, the Conservative Party’s official historian, has been correcting the mistake that is constantly being made in attributing the famous phrase “One Nation” to Disraeli. It appeared again in The Times on 3 December.

A report in The Daily Telegraph on November 29 about a famous First World War painting prompted the following letter from Alistair Lexden, which was published on December 3 in the centre of the page with a picture of the painting in question.

This was the headline over a leading article in The Times on November 17, stemming from a report in the paper that “local councils have been blocking special needs children from the basic assistance to which they are entitled”, spending £100 million in the process.

In a letter published in The Times on November 19, Alistair Lexden called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the process by which a vote of no confidence can be sought in the leader of the Conservative Party.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph at the beginning of November, Alistair Lexden revealed a hitherto little-known account of how the Armistice at the end of the First World War came to be brought into force at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Alistair Lexden asked a further oral question in the Lords on 12 November as part of his continuing campaign to try and secure justice for Ted Heath,  whose reputation has been damaged by the notorious Operation Conifer. Once again he received overwhelming support in the House.

It was under this headline that a letter from Alistair Lexden was published in the TLS: The Times Literary Supplement on November 9.