Best known for his 1989 novel House of Cards (which was adapted into both a BBC miniseries and a Netflix series), he also wrote such acclaimed books as Winston's War and A Ghost at the Door. Also a British Conservative Party politician, he served during the mid 1990s as his party's Deputy Chairman. After attending Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (in Massachusetts, U.S.A.), he worked as an editor and political writer for the Boston Globe.