His mother married again and it was decided that in the closeness of the Glasgow Jewish

His mother married again and it was decided that in the closeness of the Glasgow Jewish community he should be brought up by an aunt who scraped together the wherewithal to send him to the academically intense High School of Glasgow. He thought it true that Canvey Island was then a pretty awful spot which had been thoroughly ruined by unplanned building. Like many First Class honours history graduates of Glasgow University, Jones was given a scholarship to Oxford to read PPE at University College.If Evelyn Sharp was to be his second patron, the master of University College, the redoubtable Sir William Beveridge, was his first. But, unlike most Scots who have had tremendous success in London, he kept it quiet and did not flaunt it.Jones told me that he never knew his father, who was killed in France in the early stages of the First World War. His colleague as a permanent secretary Philip Allen, now Lord Allen of Abbeydale, told me: "Jones showed great ingenuity in tackling problems and finding a way through the jungle."The first reference in Crossman's Diaries to Jones, reflecting on his entry to the Ministry of Housing, describes him as a "clever, keen Welshman" He was nothing of the kind He was a Scot. Crossman wrote of Jones that he was brilliant at briefing his minister. However, the briefing did not take into account Crossman's perception of the views of the people of Cambridge and again there was a clash when Crossman told Jones curtly that the men in Whitehall did not necessarily know best.However, on a number of very important issues, such as the protection of the coastline - albeit against Jones's wishes and those of the Planning Division in the first instance - Jones backed his Secretary of State with demonic energy and huge skill in Whitehall.

But that even when very little amenity survived, that little meant more to the people who lived there than all the amenity of a beautiful national park a hundred miles away.Dame Evelyn and Jones lectured Crossman that his views were those of a sentimental preservationist. Crossman perversely thought it was his duty to represent the unfortunate house owners who had left London and bought a place in Essex only to find that their home was to be utterly ruined by a development. All too clearly, Jones wanted to run the British urban environment in his own way.Jimmy Jones was the favourite son and henchman-in-chief at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government of Dame Evelyn Sharp, the Permanent Secretary at the time. Enormously clever, talented, devoted to the public service, utterly incorruptible in any sense, Jones and Sharp exuded certainties that they were right and knew better than any one else. Their unspoken contract with the politicians was that ministers were there to be guided by them - and so long as this divine guidance was generally accepted, they would slave night and day for their "political" masters.

If, on the other hand, those politicians were foolhardy enough to say, "Wait a moment - we are elected - we doubt that actual people appreciate what you, Evelyn, and you, Jimmy, deem to be good for them" - sullen trouble loomed.For example, in the autumn of 1965 Crossman's inspector had urged Crossman to turn down a request from an oil company for planning permission on Canvey Island.The Dame and Jones, however, were insistent that Crossman should overrule the inspector in the national interest. It's not merely me, it's having Stevenson [Sir Matthew Stevenson, the new Permanent Secretary] and five politicians on top of him But there is no doubt I am a negative factor. And he did say to me in the course of this long interview: "I know one has to pay a heavy price for having able ministers and, in your case, we pay it." So we've lost him, and that's that.As the Parliamentary Private Secretary, I was a silent fly on the wall at that interview. That battle Crossman lost.In his entry for the same Tuesday Crossman writes:I talked to Steve [Swingler] straight away about the future of J.D Jones.

I told him that the PM, and Barbara Castle as well, had been at me and that I couldn't hold the breach. Steve, whose first reaction to the rumour was that it was impossible to let J.D go, was already caving in. "Anyway," he added to me, "Jones is miserably unhappy in the department and he wants to go. His third wife Fiona Muir is the mother of his two sons.Leonard MiallWalter Goetz, artist, cartoonist: born Cologne 24 November 1911; married 1934 Gillian Crawshay-Williams (died 1995; marriage dissolved 1937), 1939 Patricia (Tony) Elton Mayo (marriage dissolved 1945), 1968 Fiona Muir (two sons, and one foster son); died London 13 September 1995.. "Harold [Wilson] has bloody well stitched me up," Dick Crossman fumed on the night of Monday 9 May 1966. Or as a calmer, less angry, Crossman put it, writing his weekly diary on Sunday for Tuesday 10 May: In the evening, I was due to see the Prime Minister about the battle I was having to get historic buildings transferred from the Ministry of Works to the Ministry of Housing.