Quintin Hogg, from 1950 to 1963 the 2nd Viscount Hailsham and as a life peer Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone since 1970, was by any standards a rara avis. A man of the highest intellectual accomplishments, and something of a philosopher, he was known and greatly admired by the wider public as a figure of integrity and courage. His somewhat volatile character, particularly in the early part of his political and legal career, made him liable to provoke rows - sometimes to his own detriment.

Yet he could rise to the great occasion with consummate skill and a sensitive touch -as he did in his speech in February 1968 when Shadow Home Secretary on the controversial issue of the Kenya Asians Bill. His mental energy enabled him to combine an active political life with success at the Bar, a conjunction more readily attainable in the Edwardian and Georgian period than it was either in his time or today.

His colourful personality and ebullient behaviour both as a lawyer and a politician led many to underestimate his intellectual gifts. At the Bar these were frequently wasted by solicitors who chose to brief him for disputes with a knockabout flavour or with a potential for high drama. Yet he could be at his best in the exposition of highly complex issues of law. When as a young man he won a prize Fellowship at All Souls, he defeated many who were later to achieve the brightest legal stardom. As a speaker, his parliamentary eloquence could be adapted to the demands of either House, as well as to those of the party conference. And his oratory at all times (other than moments of anger) was the product of his Classical scholarship.

These qualities and accomplishments, coupled with the fact that he was a deeply pious and reflecting Anglican, lent him an Edwardian flavour which set him apart from those with whom he shared the political stage. In part, though accusations of lack of judgment also counted, he owed to this anachronistic quality his failure to become Prime Minister in 1963, despite having been initially supported by Harold Macmillan. In terms of intellect, popular appeal and personal dynamism, Hailsham had no rival in the Conservative Party, and the one practical obstacle to his promotion -his hereditary peerage -had been removed by the 1963 Peerage Act, of which (when the moment of choice came) he eagerly availed himself.

In the middle of the Blackpool party conference Macmillan publicly intimated his intention to retire, transforming the conference into an American-style convention seeking a presidential candidate. Hailsham entered fully into the spirit of the occasion. His bid for the leadership was greeted with paroxysms of delight by the constituency representatives. Had the right of nomination rested with them, Hailsham (soon to be converted once more into Quintin Hogg) would have been borne in triumph across the threshold of No 10. In reality, however, the decision rested not with the party workers but with the Tory parliamentary establishment. The unusually thorough (though highly contentious) researches into party opinion in the Commons and the Lords, over which Macmillan presided from his sick bed, eventually brought another peer to the leadership.

Hailsham failed at this crucial juncture in his career because his parliamentary colleagues felt that his style was too flamboyant and that there was some indecorum in the uninhibited way in which at Blackpool he pressed his candidature. At a deeper level it was felt that his behaviour at this critical moment illustrated a fundamental flaw: his ebullient temperament could, and sometimes did, mar his judgment. The result was the selection of a leader far more diffident and restrained in style than Hailsham -Sir Alec Douglas-Home - who, to add insult to injury, had himself to be translated from the House of Lords, where he had sat for the previous 13 years as the 14th Earl of Home.

The brevity of Sir Alec's tenure and the character of his successor, Edward Heath, suggest that the Tories were looking for a new kind of leadership. The great themes of Conservative philosophy which Hailsham had brilliantly explored in his book, The Case for Conservatism (1947), the need for continuity in social and political life, the importance of a proper balance between social cohesion and personal liberty, the connection between religious belief and social stability and the need always to subordinate the nation's domestic ambitions to the demands of defence and foreign policy -all once fundamental elements in the Conservative creed -lost their hold on the minds of the new generation of Tory politicians.

Gilded by Hailsham's eloquence, they could still bring delegates to their feet, but the politicians themselves were almost wholly obsessed with the details of economic policy. The prevailing mood among the Tory backbenchers was one of rampant empiricism. The colours in Hailsham's palette were not appropriate for such pragmatism; his was the canvas of strong, moral brushstrokes.

Quintin McGarel Hogg was the eldest son of Lord Hailsham and Elizabeth Brown. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained firsts in both Mods and Greats. He was president of the Oxford Union. He was elected a Fellow of All Souls at the age of 24 and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1932. In 1938 he made a brilliant debut in politics by being returned at a by-election for the city of Oxford. His opponent was the then Master of Balliol, A. D. Lindsay (later Lord Lindsay of Birker), and the central issue of the campaign was Chamberlain's appeasement policy, of which Hogg was a stalwart defender.

His political and legal career was interrupted in 1939 when he served with the Tower Hamlets Rifles in the Rifle Brigade. Briefly leaving his regiment to vote against Chamberlain in the Narvik debate of May 1940, he went on to serve with the Middle Eastern Land Forces, being wounded in the Western Desert in 1941.

Returning to politics in 1942, he formed with other young Tory backbenchers the Tory Reform Committee. Its object was to reassert the Disraelian tradition of social reform. Its influence on the party as a whole was by no means negligible. The group contributed to the pressure on the wartime coalition to commit the country to the creation of a welfare state.

Hogg's outstanding abilities were now becoming known. Churchill appointed him Under-Secretary of Air in the "caretaker Government" which succeeded the wartime coalition. The Tory defeat of 1945 -though he triumphantly held his own supposedly marginal seat of Oxford City -brought Hogg into Opposition, a milieu congenial to his polemical talents.