UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
By Rosa Prince, Assistant Political Editor
03 Aug 2015
During his 51 years in the House of Commons the rumours swirled around Sir Edward Heath like a mist of innuendo.
The bachelor prime minister flatly refused to discuss his private life, his only confessed passions music and his beloved yacht, Morning Cloud. Even those closest to him could not say for certain where his interests lay.
Now, a decade after his death, the former prime minister’s sexual leanings have once again become subject to public attention. Only this time, with an inquiry into claims of a cover-up over allegations he was to be accused of paedophilia, some answers must finally be provided to the many questions surrounding the mystery that was “Ted” Heath.
So what do we know about the private life of this most shy and retiring former premier?
Edward Richard George Heath was born in Broadstairs, Kent, at the height of the First World War, to a lower middle class family. His mother, Edith, would remain the woman he was closest to for the rest of his life.
A grammar schoolboy and talented musician, he won an organ scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, before graduating in PPE on the eve of the Second World War in 1939 and enlisting.
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