Francis Urquhart - Background

Background

Urquhart has served for many years as Chief Whip of the Conservative Party. He is believed by most people to be an honest and decent man; as Lord 'Teddy' Billsborough remarks to Michael Samuels in House of Cards, "Dull dog, but sound as a bell. The odd thing about Francis Urquhart is that he'd never stab you in the back, however much he disliked you. Not many left like Urquhart. Dying breed, more's the pity." Prior to events of the novel, the characterisation seems accurate, but when the new Prime Minister rejects a number of original ideas suggested by Urquhart, including a new memorandum for a Cabinet reshuffle in which he would hold a senior Cabinet post, Urquhart is revealed as an ambitious, vengeful and manipulative man who lusts after power and is willing to commit murder and blackmail to get it. (Dobbs chose his initials very deliberately). He is encouraged by his equally amoral wife, Elizabeth.

The books reveal that Urquhart was a tutor before entering politics and that he felt pressured by his family to live up to the memory of his older brother, Alastair, who died in the Second World War. He also comments in To Play the King that his family was originally Scottish, but moved to England when James I took power: "'My family came south with James I. We were defenders of the English throne before your family was ever heard of,'" he says to the King when forcing his abdication. In the television version of The Final Cut, Urquhart claims that he was born in the Scottish Highlands and flashback sequences feature him being in the Army, which earlier books suggest he was not. In the TV series, he tells a newspaper reporter he was "'a young lieutenant in the Scots Guards'" when asked about his youth. He has a fondness for Bruichladdich malt whisky. He is also fond of hunting and shooting both at Chequers and his own original country estate (seen only in House of Cards) near Southampton. The tie he wears in the TV series suggests that he attended Eton College.