After nearly 20 years in role, he is succeeded by former surgeon Lord Ribeiro.

Lord Michael Ashcroft KCMG PC is stepping down after nearly 20 years as Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), with Lord Bernard Ribeiro CBE FRCS appointed as his successor.

During his time as Chancellor, Lord Ashcroft has made a significant contribution to the growing success of ARU, including donations totalling £10 million to build two state-of-the-art Lord Ashcroft International Business School facilities in Chelmsford and Cambridge.

While serving as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Veterans’ Transition from 2012-18, Lord Ashcroft played an important role in establishing ARU’s Veterans & Families Research Hub. (more…)

Only a year ago, Rishi Sunak was a name known only to close followers of Westminster politics. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the most important figure in the government after the prime minister and the man talked about as the most likely future leader of the country, or at least the Conservative party.

But who is he? Has he risen so quickly that his views are not fully formed and how broad are his interests and his appeal? (more…)

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC has had his latest “hero of the month” article published in Britain at War, the country’s best-selling military history monthly magazine.

The December issue of the magazine has four pages on the life and career of Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan, who was awarded the George Cross (GC) for bravery during the Second World War.

Khan, known to so many simply by her codename “Madeleine”, was the first woman secret agent to be infiltrated into Nazi-occupied France. Born in Moscow and from a truly international family, she was recruited to join the secretive Special Operations Executive (SOE). (more…)

First published in the Daily Express on Saturday 14 November 2020.

IN THE summer of 2019, Rishi Sunak was a junior minister in the local government department writing on his constituency website about council tax and disabled lavatories. A year later he was Chancellor of the Exchequer – a role second only in importance to that of Prime Minister – and at the forefront of the fight to defend the British economy from the devastating effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The speed of his ascent and the magnitude of the crisis meant Sunak – dubbed “Dishy Rishi” and enjoying approval ratings Boris Johnson could only dream of – went from relative unknown to household name almost overnight. Tipped as a future Prime Minister, his rapid rise means the public knows little about the man who has become the undoubted political celebrity of 2020, yet his is an extraordinary story of a family’s rise to prominence through hard work. (more…)

First published in the Telegraph Magazine on Saturday, 14 November 2020.

Fearless, wild and brilliant – Paddy Mayne, founding father of the SAS, is reputed to have destroyed more German planes during the Second World War than the RAF’s top ace.

So why was his bravery never fully recognised in his lifetime?

Ahead of a new BBC drama, military historian Lord Ashcroft examines the extraordinary life – and premature death – of the most controversial Special Forces hero in history.

On a granite plinth in Conway Square in the centre of Newtownards, Co Down, there is a near life-size bronze statue in memory of the town’s most famous son. The inscription beneath it reads: ‘Lt Col Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne 1915-1955.’

With a modesty that was typical of the man himself, there is no mention that he was a founding father of the SAS, no mention of his astonishing four Distinguished Service Order (DSO) awards from the Second World War, and no mention that Paddy Mayne was arguably the UK’s greatest-ever front-line soldier. (more…)

INTERVIEW WITH TALK RADIO ABOUT GOING FOR BROKE: THE RISE OF RISHI SUNAK – 0930hrs
Three years ago, Rishi Sunak was an unknown junior minister in the Department of Local Government. By the age of thirty-nine, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, grappling with the gravest economic crisis in modern history.

In the middle of 2019, Rishi Sunak was an unknown junior minister in the local government department. Seven months later, at the age of thirty-nine, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, grappling with the gravest economic crisis in modern history.

Michael Ashcroft’s new book charts Sunak’s ascent from his parents’ Southampton pharmacy to the University of Oxford, the City of London, Silicon Valley – and the top of British politics.

BUY NOW: https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/going-for-broke

Serialisation of Going For Broke: The Rise of Rishi Sunak, published in The Mail On Sunday on 08 November 2020.

If there is such a thing as a perfect childhood, all the evidence suggests that Rishi Sunak was lucky enough to have had one.

Loving parents and siblings, a stable home environment, a big house with a garden in the sort of leafy English neighbourhood where children can play in the street, and an education at one of the country’s leading public schools. (more…)

First published in the Mail on Sunday on 08 November 2020.

Who is Rishi Sunak? That’s the question I set out to answer when I decided to write a book about how he landed one of the most powerful and influential jobs in government.

It all happened so suddenly. One minute almost nobody outside Westminster and Yorkshire, where he is an MP, had heard of him.

The next, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, leading the economic response to coronavirus. In what seemed like a heartbeat, he had become a star. (more…)

First published in the Sunday Express on 08 November 2020.

THERE are more than 3,300 graves, tombs and memorials in Westminster Abbey, including the final resting places of 30 kings and queens.

However, to me, there is one grave that, since it was placed in the floor of the 800-year-old building just inside the Great West Door, has a significance matched by no other.

It is the final resting place of the Unknown Warrior and has been rightly revered for an entire century – since King George V first paid his respects on Armistice Day, November 1920. (more…)

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC has had his latest “hero of the month” article published in Britain at War, the country’s best-selling military history monthly magazine.

The November issue of the magazine has four pages on the life and career of Petty Officer George McKenzie Samson, who was awarded the VC for bravery during the First World War.

Samson, who was born in Carnoustie, Forfarshire (now Fife), Scotland, led an adventurous life travelling extensively all over the world. He was awarded his VC for bravery during the Gallipoli landings in April 1915. (more…)