So who WERE the two Tory ministers who had gay flings with Christopher Hitchens at Oxford?

Alpha minds in and around Westminster that normally grapple with issues such as the forthcoming election, the sinking pound and the war in Afghanistan, were turned this week towards a ticklish and wholly unexpected political mystery.



Which two ministers of Margaret Thatcher's government had gay relations with the writer Christopher Hitchens while at Oxford?



Since Hitchens's extraordinary claim emerged this week, the louche figure, now 60, who has been married twice, has fended off all requests for further information.



After all - even for a clever polemicist who takes his work very seriously - such a tantalising, if frivolous kiss-and-tell is bound to sell extra copies of his memoir Hitch-22 when it is published in the summer.



Christopher Hitchens at a literary party with Martin Amis and Tina Brown

After all - even for a clever polemicist who takes his work very seriously - such a tantalising, if frivolous kiss-and-tell is bound to sell extra copies of his memoir Hitch-22 when it is published in the summer.

But those who knew 'Hitch' in his Balliol College years, between 1967 and 1970, when he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics while simultaneously running amok as a rabid Trotskyist (he got a third-class degree, incidentally), have little doubt his claims are true.



For although he has always enjoyed a reputation as a womaniser, at Oxford Hitchens was known to be bisexual.



According to one contemporary: 'He had a reputation for being AC/DC and, although a Trot, he was fancied by quite a few gay Tories and moved in those circles.'



One may wonder just why a young man who despised capitalism and all it stood for should have dallied with future Conservative ministers rather than future Left-wing leaders.

Whatever his reasons, Hitchens was very conscious of the fact that he was attractive to both men and women. As one close figure recalls: 'He flirted with both, but with men he could be rather teasing. It wasn't very nice.'

Controversy: Christopher Hitchens said he had gay relations with two members of Thatcher's cabinet while at Oxford

Yet Hitchens was himself the victim of unrequited lust for two other men, one of them being his lifelong friend, the novelist Martin Amis, which is only hinted at in his book.

He did, though, sleep with Amis's sister, the tragic depressive Sally, who many years later committed suicide.



In his book, Hitchens, who moved to the U.S. in 1981 and recently took American citizenship, dismisses the homosexual episodes as a 'mildly enjoyable relapse' into something that began when he was at school.



Of his time at Oxford, he writes: 'Every now and then, even though I was by then fixed on the pursuit of young women, a mild and mildly enjoyable relapse would occur and I suppose I can claim this . . . of two young men who became members of Margaret Thatcher's government.'



Inevitably, there have been dismissive comments from prominent figures of the Thatcher years, many of whom were at Oxford with Hitchens and are alarmed at the suggestion they enjoyed dalliances with him. But there is also amusement.



'Not guilty, m'lud,' is the chortling response of Lord (William) Waldegrave, 63. He held various ministerial posts under Mrs Thatcher until being made Health Secretary in 1990, and was later in John Major's Cabinet. He is now the Provost of his old school, Eton, and is married to cookery writer Caroline Waldegrave.

Christopher Hitchens in his youth with reporter Carol Blue

'The mind boggles - I should love to know the answer myself,' he adds.



Lord Waldegrave was president of the Oxford Union debating society, where Hitchens sometimes was invited to speak, and remembers him as 'a most engaging character, but not in that way in my case'.



Another Oxford contemporary and former Union president, Gyles Brandreth - who served as a junior minister and whip under John Major, rather than Thatcher - recalls Hitchens as 'very attractive in every sense. He dressed like Che Guevara and charmed like Marilyn Monroe'.



Che Guevara was Hitchens's idol at that time of widespread student protests. He was involved in riots against the Vietnam War and the ' wickedness' of capitalism.



He was instrumental in orchestrating the commotion that greeted then Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart when he arrived to speak at an Oxford Union debate against a motion that the British government was Washington's puppet.



For the first time in history, a debate at the Union was abandoned.



Those were lively days at Oxford with a colourful collection of undergraduates including Edwina Currie (not one of Hitchens's female conquests), the future head of MI6 John Scarlett and Tony Blair's brother William, a High Court judge.



A bearded Bill Clinton, at Oxford for a year as a Rhodes Scholar, was also a sometime drinking buddy of Hitchens. Also in the mix was another Oxford Union president, Stephen Milligan, who became an MP under Major in 1992.

Christopher was an 'attractive sexy youth'

Milligan's death at the age of 45 in 1994 while engaged to journalist Julie Kirkbride - now the expenses-embattled Conservative MP for Bromsgrove - introduced a wider public to the dangers of self-bondage and auto-erotic asphyxiation.



When his body was found, an orange segment was in his mouth.



Hitchens was, says a friend, a 'ferociously political animal' who was a leading figure in the Revolutionary Socialist Students' Federation.



This was committed to 'the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and imperialism and its replacement by workers' power'.



But, crucially, there was always sex - 'lots of sex', says a contemporary - facilitated by the young Hitchens's languorous charms with which he was able to attract desirable women.



These included Anna Wintour - who went on to become editor-in-chief of American Vogue.



But he also used his charms rather wickedly on men he considered might be vulnerable to them. One Oxford friend recalls Hitchens meeting John Sparrow, the distinguished Warden of All Souls.



Sparrow, who had sensationally defeated the historian A. L. Rowse for the post, was in his 60s.



A confirmed bachelor, he was described by the university newspaper Cherwell as having 'a scented handkerchief pressed to his delicate nostrils'.



Says the friend: 'After being introduced, I heard Christopher ask: "Warden, are you as other men?" John was rather taken aback by this sly dig at his sexuality. It was clear he was just playing a rather cruel and unedifying game.'



Robert Jackson, a Tory before defecting to Labour, also knew Hitchens at Oxford. He served as a minister under Mrs Thatcher and considers the anecdote about Hitchens and Sparrow 'to be 'typical of Christopher's rather flirtatious, pert style'.



Jackson, 63, who held the Wantage constituency for the Conservatives from 1983 until switching to Labour in 2005 over policy differences, says of Hitchens: 'He was clearly bisexual at that time and was very keen on Martin Amis, but I believe only slept with his sister. He was very charming.



'I always thought that Hitchens was someone who, like a lot of people when they are handsome in youth, spent a lot of time looking in the mirror and admiring himself. That is the vein through which he drew nourishment through his life.'



But despite this waspish appraisal, the pair were friendly enough for Hitchens to ask a favour of Jackson.



Hitchens had invited miners' leader Lawrence Daly to address a political meeting. The students couldn't afford a hotel bill and needed a bed for him for the night.



Jackson, whom Cherwell's diarist described at the time as a 'gay, trendy Conservative', helped Hitchens by arranging for the arch-Left-wing trade unionist (who later led the miners' strike that weakened Edward Heath) to stay at the august college and breakfast with the Fellows in the morning.



'That was the closest I got to Christopher's Left-wing activities,' says Jackson, whose wife, Caroline, is an MEP. 'Christopher was an attractive, sexy youth and he made what he could of it in a rather exploitative way.



'But any suggestion that I might be the person he is referring to in the Thatcher government is simply wrong.'



So what about David Heathcoat-Amory, a tall, sepulchral figure who was socially busy at Oxford and president of the Conservative Association when Hitchens was an undergraduate?



The Tory MP for Wells in Somerset was a junior environment minister under Mrs Thatcher. 'David is impenetrably heterosexual,' says one of his oldest friends. 'He's convinced Hitchens made the claims up to attract attention to his book.'



Finally, there is John Redwood, who went on to head Mrs Thatcher's Policy Unit. He was an undergraduate at Magdalen College, but as for his links with Hitchens, one friend said: 'Can you imagine Redwood and Hitchens joining up over anything?'



As for Hitchens's own unrequited lust, he writes rather nostalgically about those days of early friendship with Martin Amis which began at Oxford. He notes in a rather wistful manner that 'I can remember making him laugh'.



Many years later he refers to Amis as someone who is 'loved by women while also being adored by men'.



'Hitchens adores Amis,' says one close observer. 'He is Boswell to Amis's Dr Johnson. When they're together, Amis will even ask Hitchens about aspects of his own life that he's unsure of - and Hitchens usually comes up with the information. It's as though he's monitoring everything Amis does.



'I'm certain they would have had an affair if Amis was so inclined, but he has only ever been interested in women.'



In his forthcoming book, Hitchens writes: 'I find I can more or less acquit myself on any charge of having desired Martin carnally. What eventuated (sic) instead was the most heterosexual relationship that one young man could conceivably have with another.'



But friends from Oxford days also remember Hitchens's affection for another man - his flatmate James Fenton, the author and later Professor of Poetry at Oxford.



'I thought he was in love with Fenton, who was openly gay,' recalls a close contemporary, 'but while Fenton liked Christopher a lot and they were great friends, he was not in love with him and didn't want a physical relationship.'



Hitchens, an atheist, married his first wife, Greek Cypriot Eleni Meleagrou, by whom he has two children, in a Greek Orthodox church and his second, American Carol Blue, in a New York synagogue.



Which brings us back to why Hitchens would throw into his memoirs the titbit that he had slept with two former ministers.



Yes, it may have been to publicise the book. But one old friend believes there is another explanation. 'It was more than likely a pre-emptive move. Christopher knew if he didn't mention it, someone else would.'







