The family moved to Bexhill to escape German air raids; Maudling won scholarships to the Merchant Taylors' School and Merton College, Oxford.

With his mentor Rab Butler as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Maudling worked to reduce taxes and controls in order to move from post-war austerity to affluence.

The Ministry was responsible for aircraft production and supplying the armed forces, and Maudling came to agree with critics who argued that it was an unnecessary intermediary; he therefore recommended its abolition.

Although supportive of Harold Macmillan's appointment as prime minister over the rival claims of Butler in 1957, Maudling found himself in difficulties over his position in the new government.

Macmillan appointed Maudling to the post of Paymaster General and spokesman in the House of Commons for the Ministry of Fuel and Power, which was technically a demotion.

Nine months later, Maudling had proved his usefulness; Macmillan brought him into the Cabinet on 17 September 1957, where he acted more as a Minister without Portfolio: he had specific responsibility for persuading the six members of the embryonic European Economic Community, who had recently signed the Treaty of Rome, to abandon their proposal for a customs union in favour of a wider free-trade area where each country would preserve their own external tariffs.

Faced with widespread rejection of the proposals, Maudling aroused hostility in Bonn and Paris by seeking to play off the Germans against the French.

On 14 November 1958, six months after the election of General de Gaulle as premier, Jacques Soustelle, the French Minister of Information, confirmed to the Press that France would reject the Maudling plan.

Maudling was opposed to any proposal to join the Common Market on the basis that it would end Britain's right to make commercial agreements with New Zealand and Australia.

Maudling promptly made his case in public, and three weeks later was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in Macmillan's "Night of the Long Knives" attempt to rejuvenate his Cabinet.

By 1963, during the Profumo affair, there was talk, encouraged by Martin Redmayne (Chief Whip) and Lord Poole (Party Chairman), of Maudling succeeding Macmillan as prime minister.

[16] On the morning of Saturday 19 October Butler then Maudling agreed to serve under Home, enabling him to accept office as prime minister.

[17] Upon being forced out of the post by the election defeat, Maudling left a note to his successor, James Callaghan, simply stating "Good luck, old cock....

[18] Out of office, Maudling accepted the offer of a seat on the board of Kleinwort Benson in November 1964, one of the factors which led to his being shifted to spokesman on Foreign Affairs in early 1965.

When Douglas-Home resigned, after putting in place a system in which the leadership was directly elected, Maudling fought against Edward Heath for the position of candidate to the party centre-right.

Maudling's business directorships with Kleinwort Benson and others were mentioned by his opponents as evidence of his lack of commitment for the role, and he was criticised as too close to the Macmillan/Douglas-Home style of politics.

At a 15 December 1971 news conference in Belfast, Maulding said that the British Army had the power to reduce IRA violence to "something which is acceptable", a remark widely regarded as a gaffe.

This backfired when the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester-Clark, resigned when denied the full number of troops he requested in March 1971.

That August, Maudling authorised the Northern Ireland government to introduce internment without trial for terror suspects, which caused widespread upheaval and anger among the nationalist population due to its exclusive use on that community,[22] and was followed by an already planned massive escalation in the level of violence.

[citation needed] Maudling was often the target of satirical cartoons in major newspapers, and was lampooned in the magazine Private Eye and the television comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Devlin subsequently told journalists that Maudling's statement contained numerous falsehoods and expressed no regrets for the victims of the incident.

Maudling came to the decision that his responsibility for the Metropolitan Police, which was beginning fraud investigations into Poulson, made his position as Home Secretary untenable.

[citation needed] When the report was considered by the House of Commons, the Conservative Party organised its MPs to attend the debate to "Save Reggie".

As Lewis Baston's 2004 biography recounts, Maudling and his wife became heavy drinkers once his political career was effectively ended by the scandal.

[citation needed] Maudling died at the Royal Free Hospital in London, from kidney failure and cirrhosis of the liver, on 14 February 1979; he was 61.

[3] They had three sons and a daughter, Caroline Maudling, who became a journalist in the 1960s as the "travelling teenager" of the Daily Mail and, among other things, appeared alongside John Lennon on BBC TV's Juke Box Jury in 1963.

[31] When Caroline aroused comment by having a child out of wedlock in the late 1960s, Maudling was staunch in her defence, publicly expressing paternal pride.