The Conservative MP, acerbic diarist and all-round bon viveur, Mr Alan Clark - once described as a man who "loves to be naughty but not to be teased" - has died at his home at Saltwood Castle, Kent, his family announced yesterday.
Despite undergoing surgery in June to remove a brain tumour, Mr Clark (71) died suddenly at home on Sunday. A statement from his family said the MP for Kensington and Chelsea had already been buried during a private family funeral. The statement added that Mr Clark, known for his love of animals, "said he would like it to be stated that he regarded himself as having gone to join Tom and the other dogs".
The former Conservative prime minister, Baroness Thatcher, in whose government Mr Clark served as a trade minister during the arms-to-Iran affair, led the tributes to a man she said was a "Tory to his fingertips". She said: "Alan Clark was a doughty parliamentarian, an accomplished historian and Tory to his fingertips. Politics is poorer and the world duller with his passing."
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, described Mr Clark as "extraordinary, amusing, irreverent, but with real conviction and belief, and behind the headlines, kind and thoughtful. He was a complete one-off and, above all, his own man. We will all miss him."
The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, said that despite knowing about Mr Clark's recent illness it was a great shock to learn of his death. "I think all of us will remember his wit, intelligence, originality and readiness to say what he thought," he said.
The publication of Mr Clark's political diaries in 1993 was, of course, a watershed in his life, after which he was relentlessly teased in the press about his rakish reputation as a seducer of women, often reaching "Olympic" standards, one commentator said. Received at Westminster with a mixture of embarrassment and sheer pleasure by his fellow MPs, the diaries were an undoubted success and Clark was resolutely "unembarrassable" by tales of scandal and gossip. His patience was tested, however, with the publication of a spoof Alan Clark diary in the London Evening Standard. He successfully sued the newspaper in 1997 a few months after he held his seat for the Conservatives in the general election in May.
Clark was highly praised for his work as a military historian, writing books on the failure of British generals to avoid the slaughter of their soldiers in the trenches during the first World War and scripting a historical series about the Tory Party for television. Nonetheless, for a man noted for his thick skin, he seemed at times unfulfilled, perhaps sensing that his reputation as a loveable rascal did him few favours when it came to politics.
Seen as a hawkish trade minister, the Matrix Churchill trial - concerning alleged illegal arms exports to Iraq - ended after the defendants claimed that in office Mr Clark had given them a "nod and a wink" to carry on selling arms to the Iraqi regime, despite a ban on such sales.