Last modified on Tue 6 Apr 2021 13.22 EDT
Although the Conservative politician Cheryl Gillan, who has died aged 68 after suffering from cancer, served as Welsh secretary from 2010 to 2012, her further prospects of cabinet office may have been reduced by her opposition to the government’s plans to build the HS2 high speed rail link through the Chiltern hills of her Buckinghamshire constituency.
She told her constituents in the safely Conservative suburban seat of Chesham and Amersham that she would defy the party whip – “be very, very sure of that” – during the 2010 general election that brought the Conservatives to power in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Although in cabinet she abided by the principle of collective responsibility, she remained an opponent of the line.
Dame Cheryl Gillan, Welsh Secretary under David Cameron and staunch opponent of HS2 – obituary
She campaigned to protect the Chilterns against HS2 and housing development and in 2019 announced Boris Johnson s Tory leadership victory
5 April 2021 • 4:16pm
Cheryl Gillan with her dog Tizzy after he was voted Westminster Dog of the Year in 1996
Credit: Brian Smith
Dame Cheryl Gillan, who has died aged 68, was a combative Conservative MP who was Welsh Secretary in David Cameron’s Coalition, but made a greater impact campaigning against the HS2 high-speed railway being driven through her Chesham & Amersham constituency.
She was a forceful personality in the Commons, seen by some as overbearing and often rebuked by the Chair for raising bogus points of order. She was also the first woman to turn out for the Lords & Commons cricket team, having been a useful all-rounder at Cheltenham Ladies’ College.
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The best directors always wanted Rosalind Knight in their casts. Photograph: Simon Annand/PA
In a career stretching over seven decades, the distinctive, cut-glass character actor Rosalind Knight, who has died aged 87, renewed her TV profile with younger audiences in two quirkily original comedy sitcoms: Jonathan Harvey’s Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999-2001) and Robert Popper’s Friday Night Dinner (in the second series, 2012).
She dressed down and mussed up her hair for Beryl Merit, a retired prostitute and landlady of the north London flat shared by Kathy Burke’s foul-mouthed Linda La Hughes and James Dreyfus’s acidulous actor; and reversed that process for Cynthia Goodman, aka “Horrible Grandma”, who aggressively stiffens the tone of the Friday night ritual hosted by her son (Paul Ritter) and his wife (Tamsin Greig).