David Steel

Michael Foot was speaking affectionately when in 1979 he quipped that David Steel had apparently gone from 'rising hope to elder statesman' without any intervening period whatsoever. But the remark also neatly captured a career which had seen 'the Boy David' enter the House of Commons aged only twenty-six, become leader of the Liberal Party in 1976 (at thirty-eight years old one of the youngest pa...