Edward Heath: A leader in music and sailing

Margaret Thatcher said of him in The Path of Power (1995): "I felt sorry for Ted Heath personally. He had his music and a small circle of friends, but politics was his life."

But Sir Edward's love of classical music gained him an organ scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, and he nearly chose music as his career. Sir Hugh Allen, who was professor of music, deterred him. "He told me bluntly that if I decided to devote my life to music, it would be a long time before I made any money and when I did it wouldn't be very much," said Sir Edward. "And he pointed out that I had little enough to start with. So, all in all, it was a thoroughly bad idea."

He took his grand piano into 10 Downing Street when he became Prime Minister in 1970. He was attracted by the authority of conducting, saying: "The power of the podium is far greater than that of the Prime Minister."

Sir Edward was chairman of the London Symphony Orchestra Trust from 1963-70. He frequently conducted the orchestra, and others around the world, and helped to found the European Community Youth Orchestra, conducting it on tours of Europe.

He said: "Music means everything to me when I'm alone. And it's the best way of getting that bloody man Wilson out of my hair."

Sir Edward took up sailing relatively late, and once said "ocean racing is like standing under a cold shower tearing up £20 notes". But after discovering a taste for yachting in his late forties, he went on to skipper British teams to victory in a string of long-distance races. In 1969, his yacht Morning Cloud took theTattersalls Cup, winning theSydney to Hobart race, a feat not repeated by a British team until 2004.