Powell was circumspect and chose not to confirm any of the suggestions put to him.[1] Candidates include Powell's Eton contemporary Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller (nicknamed "Bullying-Manner"),[64] later ennobled as Lord Dilhorne, who served as Attorney General during the 1950s and Lord Chancellor in the early 1960s.[65] According to Powell, Manningham-Buller was an unattractive figure at school; he was instrumental in the dismissal of a master who sent an inappropriate note to a junior boy, an action reflected in the novels when Widmerpool instigates the sacking of Akworth.[8][66] Powell's brother-in-law, the Labour peer Lord Longford, believed that he was the model for Widmerpool, a proposition that Powell rejected; Longford had also claimed to be Erridge, another character from the novels.[8] The Labour politician Denis Healey thought that Powell had based Widmerpool on Edward Heath, the British prime minister between 1970 and 1974.