Lord McAlpine: Tory fundraiser and Thatcher's loyal confidant

Lord McAlpine, who has died aged 71, was the Conservative party's dynamic chief fundraiser during the prime ministership of Margaret Thatcher, to whom he became an unchallengeably close and loyal confidant.

Born into the wealth of the family construction empire, he had struck out on his own to amass a fortune that owed more to whim and bravado than formal education, investing in everything from Australian commercial property to modern art and a curious range of other collectables including vintage neckwear.

Urbane and gregarious, he tapped many a City figure of the 1980s for Tory donations over lunch at the Garrick Club, whose salmon and cucumber tie he often sported. In 1993 he admitted a misjudgment in accepting party funds from Asil Nadir, head of the failed Polly Peck.

McAlpine was notably early to spot the worth of Mark Rothko, buying abstract works for a few thousand dollars that later sold for tens of millions. Yet his taste was on occasion more questionable, in particular a collection of nude portraits of seemingly preteen girls. None of the adverse comments this attracted in various media outlets over the years caused him to sue, though he eventually sold the photographs and drawings.

But he took quick and firm legal action against those on Twitter who in 2012 linked his name with the scandal surrounding boys abused three decades earlier at a children's home in Wales. Sally Bercow, wife of Commons Speaker John Bercow, was among several to apologise and pay damages. The BBC, despite not having named McAlpine in the Newsnight programme that aired the issue giving rise to the comments, paid him £185,000. He donated the proceeds to charity.

The storm also cost the corporation the job of George Entwistle, its newly appointed director-general.

Did the associated stress cost McAlpine his life? Some were inevitably suggesting so at the weekend. His health had long been fragile, however, with heart problems that once put him in a coma for weeks.

What was seldom in question was his energy. Aside from his business activities, various non-executive roles both in the private sector and at arts institutions, and a political involvement as Tory treasurer and for a time the party's deputy chairman, he wrote or co-wrote a succession of books. Topics ranged from memoirs to guides for collectors of artefacts. The work that attracted most attention was The Servant, a re-imagining of Machiavelli's The Prince from the perspective of a devoted retainer such as the author had been to Thatcher.

McAlpine was scornful of John Major and his heroine's other successors. In 1997 he campaigned for James Goldsmith's eurosceptic Referendum party, briefly taking over as its leader after the tycoon's death before returning to the Tory fold. David Cameron described him on Saturday as a "dedicated supporter of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party".

Robert Alistair McAlpine - his unused first forename was that of his great-grandfather "Concrete Bob", who founded the family construction business - was born in London on May 14 1942. As the second son he did not succeed to the hereditary baronetcy conferred on his forebear, instead being made a life peer under Thatcher in 1984, as Lord McAlpine of West Green. He stood down from upper house duties in 2010 in order to protect his non-domiciled tax status; he was by then living in Italy.

That was just one of numerous changes of role and status for the readily adaptable McAlpine, whose restless streak emerged early. He left Stowe School at 16 with three O levels and worked for the family firm. Although given a directorship of Robert McAlpine aged 21, he chose the path of a lone operator.

Not all his business dealings went well. At one point in mid-career he claimed to be worth less than £1m. He was credited with turning the remote West Australian town of Broome into an international tourist destination by building five-star hotels and other amenities, reviving the rundown pearling outpost. But problematic air links turned that into one of his more troubled ventures.

His personal life was also less than stable. Twice divorced, he is survived by his third wife Athena and three daughters from his previous marriages. In between, he had cheated death a handful of times - not only undergoing at least two heart bypass operations but escaping unscathed from the 1984 bombing of the Conservative conference hotel in Brighton by the IRA, which six years later went on to bomb his own Hampshire house. An inveterate traveller, McAlpine had left it unoccupied at the time.

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