Sir Julian Critchley, who died on September 9th aged 69, was a long-standing Conservative backbench MP who never obtained political office or exercised much formal influence. But he did win much acclaim and had a public reputation far greater than was accorded to most ministers, because of his writing; it was witty and urbane, gently satirising Westminster from an avowed liberal standpoint. He maintained this gift even after the recurrence of teenage polio.
He went to Staffordshire prep school, where he met Michael Heseltine. They continued together to Shrewsbury school and then to Pembroke College, Oxford. They were close friends and best man at each other's weddings.
For much of his political life, Julian Critchley was at odds with the Whips' Office, sometimes for his views and sometimes for the cavalier way he approached the serious business of politics. He was once rebuked for modelling a suit for a magazine in the 1960s. The objection was absurd and he was disposed to laugh off such incidents. This calculated indifference of his, while understandable, was a trait he might well have corrected; but he was not deferential by nature.
He had little affection for Thatcherite politics or Margaret Thatcher, whom he memorably observed could not see an institution without hitting it with her handbag. More damningly, he considered her "a purveyor of Alevel economics" and "didactic, tart and obstinate". No nickname could be too silly for her, from the "great she elephant" to that "bloody woman". During her leadership, he called members of the party "Essex men chosen by Suffolk women". He described her 1975 victory in the contest for leadership of the Tory party as "the first victory in the peasants' revolt".
During the John Major years, he was happily reconciled to mainstream Conservatism, believing Major as prime minister would resist any drift to the right. On key votes he would travel from his home in Ludlow to Westminster. These journeys were undertaken in great pain, and the gesture of support was much admired.
Julian Critchley entered parliament at the age of 28 in the 1959 general election as MP for Rochester and Chatham. But having captured this marginal seat he lost it again at the election in 1964. He was returned for Aldershot in the 1970 election and held the seat until 1997, when he did not seek re-election.
He was a liberal Tory, supporting one-nation social policies, membership of the European Community, and a defence policy based on NATO and a nuclear strategy.
He had a lively mind and was a competent parliamentarian who knew the value of the short speech - and the short article. He was always vulnerable because of his irreverent humour, which could lead to incautious and overt disrespect. If he had been able to reign back this he could probably have achieved office in the 1970-1974 Heath administration. This was not to be. Soon, he was politically marginalised by the triumph of Margaret Thatcher. He doubted her policies and even more the self-righteous way in which they were promoted.
After his defeat in 1964 he widened his journalistic experience and, in 1970, became editor of Town, part of Heseltine's Haymarket Press. It did not prosper under Julian Critchley's guidance. But this did not deter him, and over the years he developed a skill in portraying politics, particularly those of the Conservative party. His victims more often smiled than squirmed. He contributed to most national papers and appeared on radio and television.
His new career had its hazards. The combination of his views and casual approach to politics sorely tested some Conservative activists in his Aldershot constituency. Incautiously, he wrote an anonymous, disparaging and vastly amusing article in the Observer about Mrs Thatcher. Predictably the authorship became public, and a force nine storm followed. He survived, but he always needed a praetorian guard of local party friends to ensure his hold on the association.
His autobiography, A Bag of Boiled Sweets, published in 1994, was a success, revealing his ability to write beyond the world of politics and detailing his boyhood successes in the boxing ring. His most ambitious political book was Heseltine: The Unauthorised Biography. It was an interesting, rather than a penetrating, study of the Conservative power-broker.
In the early 1990s, Julian Critchley retired to Ludlow, almost immobilised by ill-health. He was tended there by Prudence Bellak, who had been his teenage love. He was knighted in 1995.
He had been twice married, with two daughters by his first wife, whom he divorced in 1965, and a son and a daughter by his second.
Sir Julian Michael Gordon Critchley: born 1930; died, September 2000