NHS Confederation · CC BY 2.0

Currie served as a Conservative member of Parliament and junior health minister, resigning in 1988 after warning, accurately but too bluntly for the government's comfort, that most British egg production was infected with salmonella. Her published diaries later revealed a four-year affair with colleague and future prime minister John Major. As health minister she appointed Jimmy Savile to chair Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital and publicly expressed confidence in him; it later emerged that Savile abused patients there, a decision that has drawn sustained scrutiny of her record since the 2010s. She has since built a career as a novelist and broadcaster.