He attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1977 with an MA, MALD, and a PhD.

[5] His doctoral dissertation on nuclear strategic arms control was published as China and SALT: Dragon Hunting in a Multinuclear World.

He has been a Senior Visiting Professor of International Relations at The Fletcher School, and a Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford.

[citation needed] Gyles Brandreth in the Sunday Express said "Michael Dobbs does for Westminster skulduggery what Agatha Christie did for the country house murder.

He held many political posts in the ensuing years, many closely linked to Norman Tebbit: 1981 to 1983 special adviser in the Department of Employment; 1984 to 1986 special adviser in the Department of Trade and Industry; 1986 to 1987 Chief of Staff of the Conservative Party; and 1994 to 1995 Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.

[19] [20] In 2013 he co-sponsored, with James Wharton MP, the European Union (Referendum) Bill to hold a national vote on the UK’s membership of the EU.

It failed, but shortly thereafter was followed by a government bill that led to the holding of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, which voted in favour of leaving the EU.

In August 2014, Lord Dobbs was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

[21] In March 2019, he criticised the Conservative government, stating that "[w]e have a flat-pack Cabinet that threatens to collapse every time you switch the telly on.

[28] In the House of Lords he said “the debate about the Elgin Marbles is really like grumpy old men talking about teenage sex, and merely the grubby bits.

He has written and presented documentaries about the school days of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, The Archers radio drama series and the Brighton Bomb.

In 2015 he walked 185 miles from his home in Wiltshire to the Richard Hale School in Hertford, where he had been a pupil, to raise money for a neighbour paralysed as a result of a rugby accident.