Ann Widdecombe: Right from the Beginning

Abortionists, women priests, homosexuals, unmarried mothers, asylum seekers, and scroungers of any hue - all run for cover once 'Doris Karloff' fixes them with her steely glare.
Neither her politics nor her style are to everybody's taste, but on one issue friend and foe agree: in an age in which unorthodox politicians are conspicuous by their absence, she has brought a swathe of colour to the political arena - defending the shackling of pregnant women in prison, scuppering Michael Howard's leadership bid with her observation that he had 'something of the night' in his character, raising the roof of the 1998 Tory conference with her impassioned (and unscripted) speech as Shadow Minister of Health, and as Shadow Home Secretary insisting vociferously that over 80 per cent of asylum seekers are 'bogus'.
In the first biography of this extraordinary figure, Nicholas Kochan traces Ann Widdecombe's life from childhood through school, university and local politics to a political career which little more than a decade after her entering Parilament has made her the uncrowned deputy leader of the Conservative Party - and the most fascinating politician of the age.