For the past four years, since the result of the EU referendum, Dominic Cummings has been at home, looking after his young son and fantasising about a return to government.

His thoughts on everything in that period, from AI to Chinese politics, are documented on his blog, where his posts -wrapped up in complex theory borrowed from army generals, psychologists and management theorists - run to thousands of words.

Although Cummings is known in the corridors of Westminster as a former special adviser and director of Vote Leave, he avoids the cameras and media.

Friends describe him as a private person, who prefers to keep his personal life out of newspapers.

However on Monday afternoon he addressed the media in an unprecedented press conference in Downing Street's rose garden.

It follows uproar over revelations that he drove 260 miles to his parents’ home in Durham while the country was in lockdown.

"I don't regret what I did. I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in the circumstances, but I think what I did was actually reasonable in these circumstances," he told the nation.

Until a Channel 4 docu-drama fronted by Benedict Cumberbatch made Dominic Cummings’ face, and scruffy attire, recognisable in British politics he shied from the limelight.