A chartered accountant by training, he entered Parliament in November 1970, and was appointed a minister in Margaret Thatcher's first government in May 1979.

[3][4] Cecil Parkinson was born at 4 Edward Street, Carnforth, Lancashire, the son of Sydney Parkinson (13 April 1906 – 15 July 1995), a warehouseman for a corn dealer, later a railwayman, and his wife, Bridget, née Graham (29 January 1910 – 1991), who was from a Northern Irish family from Tyrone and Fermanagh but their roots were in Scotland.

On 14 September 1981, he was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party as well as Paymaster General with a seat in the cabinet; he was given the added official title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1982.

He worked on the Conservative Party's 1983 election campaign, standing in the new Hertsmere constituency after South Hertfordshire's abolition.

[8] Flora Keays has learning difficulties and Asperger syndrome, and also underwent an operation to remove a brain tumour when she was four, although it is unknown whether this either caused or complicated her condition.

[citation needed] At the time of the revelation of Parkinson's relationship with Sara Keays, he made much of what he described as the volume of letters in support that he received.

Following four years on the back benches, he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy in 1987 (having been tipped as a potential Chancellor of the Exchequer), and for Transport in the July 1989 reshuffle.

He resigned along with Margaret Thatcher when she was replaced by John Major and stood down from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election.

[1] That year, Parkinson also published his memoirs, in which he claimed that, with a determined campaign, Thatcher would have won the second ballot of the Conservative leadership election, when her Cabinet had warned her she would lose and thus persuaded her to stand down.

Parkinson returned to front-line politics when he was made Conservative Party Chairman again, by William Hague, in June 1997.

[12][13] As a result of an extra-marital affair with Sara Keays, his personal secretary, he fathered a daughter, Flora, whom he never met or acknowledged.

[22] The relationship was the subject of a 2024 Channel 5 television documentary, A Very British Sex Scandal: The Love Child & the Secretary, aired from 1 May.