Edward Heath was the first democratic leader of the British Conservative Party, according to his antagonist and successor Margaret Thatcher in an apposite comment on his death.
In addition, he defined in his four-year term as prime minister from 1970-74 many of the issues with which modern Britain has been grappling ever since.
He was a political innovator who forged new relationships out of the struggles he encountered during those four years - and then lived for 31 more years to see them develop and mature. His stubborn insistence that he got most of these judgments right in office provides an intriguing historical benchmark of this evolution.
Heath came to power just as the Northern Ireland crisis erupted into an international affair with deep effects on Britain's relations with Ireland and the rest of the world.
His political instincts in handling it oscillated between a desire to restore political order and control by supporting Brian Faulkner's ham-fisted policy of internment and the consequent Bloody Sunday assault on Derry, and a growing realisation that a political solution must be found to such an intractable conflict.
For the rest of his life he defended the two approaches as necessary one to the other. An alternative view must acknowledge his readiness to learn from policy failure by suspending Stormont and initiating the Sunningdale negotiations. In those few years most of the elements of new relationship between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland and between Britain and Ireland were articulated and put into all too brief effect.
Britain's relationship with Europe is another great legacy of Heath's premiership. He was convinced that post-imperial Britain required a new contract with Europe and oversaw the negotiations which delivered it. Alongside his success in doing so came Ireland's and Denmark's entry - the EEC's first enlargement, which laid down the parameters of later ones.
It is not Heath's fault that the issue of Britain and Europe remains unresolved, although he may be faulted for underplaying its political significance on the false assumption that economically it would prove to be a decisive break from relative decline.
That it did not do so was due in large part to Britain's own social and political ill-preparedness and the long adaptation required to modernise its structures. Heath's determination to impose a new legal framework on trade unionism prefigured Tony Blair's, but required Margaret Thatcher's militancy to achieve it. This historical irony will continue to shape judgments on his achievements.