Michael John Dobbs, Baron Dobbs is a British Conservative politician and author, best known for his House of Cards trilogy. He was a senior adviser to Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron.
Politics[]
After getting his PhD in 1977, Dobbs returned to England and began working in London for the Conservative Party. From 1977 to 1979, he was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who was then leader of the Opposition. From 1979 to 1981, he was a Conservative speechwriter. From 1981 to 1986, he served as a government special advisor. From 1986 to 1987, he was the Conservative Party chief of staff.
In 1984, he survived the Brighton bombing at the Conservative Party Conference. He was called "Westminster's baby-faced hit man", by The Guardian in 1987. From 1994 to 1995, he served in the John Major government as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
On 18 December 2010, Dobbs was made a life peer, as Baron Dobbs, of Wylye, in the County of Wiltshire, and was introduced in the House of Lords on 20 December. He sits as a Conservative Peer. Lord Dobbs is also an executive board member of the Conservative Friends of the Chinese. In August 2014, Lord Dobbs was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.
Dobbs supported a Leave vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. In March 2019, he expressed himself critically about the administration of Theresa May, stating that "[w]e have a flat-pack Cabinet that threatens to collapse every time you switch the telly on."
As of 13 October 2022, Dobbs was a member of the advisory board of the Parthenon Project, an organization that aims "to reunify the Parthenon Sculptures (also known as the Elgin Marbles) currently on permanent display in the British Museum with the other remaining originals in their home city of Athens" in Greece.
Writing[]
Michael Dobbs' writing career began in 1989 with the publication of House of Cards, the first in what would become a trilogy of political thrillers with Francis Urquhart as the central character; House of Cards was followed by To Play the King in 1992 and The Final Cut in 1994. In 1990 House of Cards was turned into a television mini-series which received 14 BAFTA nominations and two BAFTA wins and was voted the 84th Best British Show in History. Netflix produced a US version based upon Dobbs's first novel and its BBC adaptation. He was an executive producer of the American series.