David Cameron: 21st old Etonian PM?
Updated on 06 April 2010
Who Knows Who finds William IV, the KGB and the Wombles tucked away behind Eton and Oxford in the Cameron files.
On the night of Tony Blair's landslide election victory in 1997, nobody blinked at the defeat of a rookie candidate standing for the Tories in Stafford.
But this was David Cameron (see Cameron's Who Knows Who power map) and his foot was in Westminster's door.
If he completes his mission, the Tory leader will enter Number 10 with a youthful bounce, like Blair, at the age of 43.
Like his close friend, the shadow chancellor George Osborne, Cameron has scorched laser-like through the ranks of the Tory party. The duo, as Blair and Brown did for Labour, have come to embody the "new" era of party politics.
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more on the #LeadersDebate contenders
- Gordon Brown: Labour's survivor
- Nick Clegg: the alternative man
So who is this bolt from the blue?
A flick through Cameron's CV reveals familiar "old" Tory rites of passage.
Born in 1966, Cameron went to independent Heatherdown prep school in Berkshire (fellow alumni include Prince Andrew) where he was one of the "brightest" boys, former head teacher James Edwards has told the Telegraph.
The class of '78 produced an impressive batch of future politicians and entrepreneurs, including Viscount Giles Goschen, who was the youngest member of John Major's government, and Edward Mallinckrodt, who has been named a "global leader of tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum.
Cameron then attended Eton College, which, according to the school's own website, has previously educated 18 British prime ministers (from Sir Robert Walpole in the 1700s to Alec Douglas-Home), a Northern Irish premier and current Thai leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, whose time at Eton overlapped with Cameron.
Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer and TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall were also the Tory leader's Eton contemporaries.
And today Cameron does not have to look hard to find former schoolmates in the ranks of the new Tories. From Boris Johnson to Hugo Swire (Cameron's holiday buddy), in 2007 The Independent reported that 14 of Cameron's front bench spokesmen were old Etonians.
In 2006, the Tory leader revealed he believed he had been "tapped up" by the KGB during a visit to Russia in his gap year between school and university.
Cameron told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that two men "speaking perfect English" had taken him and a friend out to dinner and questioned them about life in England and politics. His professors later concluded it was "a definite attempt" at recruitment.
Cameron's march down a well-trodden route into politics resumed when he won a place at Oxford, reading PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Brasenose College. He was a member of the university's notorious Bullingdon Club alongside George Osborne, Boris Johnson, and banking adviser to Labour, Sebastian Grigg.
After graduating, Cameron joined the Conservative research department where he became special adviser to "Black Wednesday" chancellor Norman Lamont and later Michael Howard.
Cameron entered Downing Street for the first time to work with John Major. He
was credited with giving Major a "sharper" edge and was picked to brief the
former PM in the run-up to the Tory election victory of 1992.
(David Cameron at Westminster shortly before he became Conservative leader in 2005 - Reuters)
The son of a stockbroker, Cameron earned his business spurs at Carlton Communications where he was head of corporate affairs for seven years. It was a strategic move to prove he could work outside the "Westminster bubble".
It is said that Lady Annabel Astor, Cameron's future mother-in-law, persuaded boss Michael Green to take him on despite having no corporate PR or investor relations experience.
After his failed attempt to become an MP in 1997, Cameron was selected as prospective candidate for Witney in Oxfordshire.
He won the seat at the 2001 general election and, after a short stint as shadow secretary for education, was party leader within four years, beating David Davis, Liam Fox and Kenneth Clarke to the top job.
Research by Cracroft's Peerage shows that Cameron would be the most aristocratic prime minister since Alec Douglas-Home in 1964.
David Cameron's mother, born Mary Fleur Mount, is the daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd baronet, which means the author Sir Ferdinand Mount is Cameron's cousin once removed. Sir Ferdinand wrote the 1983 Tory election manifesto for Margaret Thatcher.
Both David Cameron and his wife Samantha Cameron, whom he met through his sister Clare, can trace family lines back to royalty. And in both cases, research shows the blue blood comes through a mistress.
According to Debrett's, Cameron is a distant relative of the Queen because he is William IV's great, great, great, great, great grandson via an illegitimate daughter with Dorothy Jordan.
Samantha, meanwhile, is believed to be the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter of Nell Gwyn, the famous mistress of Charles II.
David and Samantha will add another branch to this family tree in September when their fourth child is due. Their disabled son Ivan died in 2009. Nancy, 6, and four-year-old Arthur are the godchildren of close family friend George Osborne.
David Cameron counts The Smiths as his "musical heroes". The group's frontman Morrissey is a famously outspoken critic of former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher and a vocal opponent of fox hunting.
Cameron is also a fan of litter-picking TV characters the Wombles. In 2008 he told the Telegraph they were "doing something useful, an early example of social action."
