After Dinner Speakers
Michael Dobbs – Lord Dobbs of Wylye – is a best-selling novelist and active member of the House of Lords.
He was with Margaret Thatcher when she first entered Downing Street as Prime Minister, and was with John Major when he was kicked out.
In between times, he wrote House of Cards, perhaps the most celebrated political novel of recent decades, which was made into an award winning BBC TV series and a major US television series on Netflix starring Kevin Spacey.
Born in 1948, Michael Dobbs was Chief of Staff and later Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.
In his restless search for a proper job, he’s also been Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, he presented the BBC TV current affairs programme Despatch Box and was a columnist for The Mail on Sunday.
He has also penned the hugely acclaimed theatre play, ‘The Turning Point’, yet it is as an author that he has gained most plaudits. After creating the iconic figure of ‘Francis Urquhart’ he has gone on to write books about Prime Ministers, Kings and the Dalai Lama. He also wrote a series of novels about Winston Churchill that had the critics falling over themselves in praise.
Now he’s created the most dangerous character of his career, Harry Jones. As the Financial Times said, “think Die Hard with a stiff upper lip.”
Michael Dobbs has many years of experience in the United States, with a doctorate from Harvard and Tufts universities. He also worked on the Boston Globe throughout the Watergate scandal. House of Cards is one of PBS’s all-time most requested TV series and his Churchill novels have been best-sellers across the States.
Newspapers have described Dobbs as “Westminster’s baby-faced hit man.” Another said he was “a man who, in Latin America, would have been shot.” A third wrote that “he was clearly put on this earth to write thrillers of the most shameless page-turning quality.”
Lord Dobbs is a highly skilled and in demand after-dinner speaker.