, in which he argued presciently that Britain would come to depend on services instead of manufacturing. He also played an important role in the rise of Margaret Thatcher, commissioning her first paper, What's Wrong With Politics?, in 1968. Their political relationship blossomed and when Margaret Thatcher became leader of Conservatives she offered him his old job back. By then, however, he had become a leader writer for the Daily Mail, where he remained until 1991, though he did write the 164-page Margaret Thatcher: A Personal and Political Biography (knocked out in 1975 in six weeks in the early mornings before he went to work), and also served as her occasional speechwriter. By the early 1990s Lewis had become increasingly concerned about the direction of government policy, penning the Mail front-page headline 'The Bankrupt Chancellor', not long before Nigel Lawson handed in his resignation. In 1991, in his biography of Jacques Delors, Master Eurocrat – The Making of Jacques Delors, he accused the then president of the European Commission of using EU institutions as 'instruments for social engineering in t){kind=link}
He was also a leader writer for the Telegraph and a founder-member of the Bow Group think tank
Russell Lewis, who has died aged 95, was a well-known thinker on the Conservative Right and the author in 1975 of a bestselling celebratory biography of the party’s new leader, Margaret Thatcher.
A pamphleteer of radicalism and campaigning skill, Lewis served at various times as director of Conservative Political Centre (CPC), as general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and as a leader writer on The Daily Telegraph and later the Daily Mail.
Like many on the party’s Right, his views on Europe changed from enthusiasm (in the 1960s he was director of the European Community Information Office, campaigning for Britain’s membership) to vehement opposition.
He was the author of a hostile Bruges Group biography of Jacques Delors, and during the passage of the Maastricht bill through Parliament he organised the Maastricht Referendum Campaign.