Major, John 1943-
English Conservative statesman

He was born in Merton, south-west London, the son of a trapeze performer, and educated at Rutlish Grammar School. He started a career in banking but his interest in politics grew and he eventually won a Commons seat, as Conservative MP for Huntingdonshire, in 1979. He entered Margaret Thatcher's government as a junior Minister in 1981 and rose to become Treasury Chief Secretary, under Chancellor Nigel Lawson, in 1987. Thereafter, having caught the eye of the Prime Minister, his progress was spectacular. In the summer of 1989 he replaced Sir Geoffrey Howe as Foreign Secretary, in controversial circumstances, and in the autumn of the same year, even more surprisingly, returned to the Treasury as Chancellor of the Exchequer, when Lawson dramatically resigned. He remained loyal to Thatcher in the first round of the 1990 Conservative Party leadership election. When she stood down, he ran successfully against Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd to become Prime Minister, thus completing one of the swiftest rises to power of recent times. Despite the country's deepening recession and Labour's improving showing in the opinion polls, he remained in power after the 1992 general election. However when his party succumbed to the Labour landslide victory of 1997, Major immediately resigned the leadership. He was made Companion of Honour in 1998.

Bibliography: Terry Major-Ball, Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother (1994)