‘Sasha has always been gunning for Cameron’

Greenock in 1997, the year of tony Blair’s landslide.)

Cameron was also part of that 2001 intake and, although Hugo is seven years his senior, he saw leadership qualities in his fellow old Etonian and the two became friends.

‘Despite that, sasha was always gunning for Dave,’ says a former minister. ‘she feels to this day that Hugo should have been given a job in the Cabinet. she thinks the only reason he isn’t is because of the Eton connection and that it didn’t fit in with the Cameron modernising agenda.’

the source adds: ‘It actually had nothing to do with that; the truth is Hugo wasn’t good enough, which is why he was sent to Northern Ireland as minister of state.’

But then the outspoken sasha not only knew her mind, she was also from a political family herself, and her school years had often been spent on the campaign trail supporting her father.

During elections she would turn up for lessons sporting a blue rosette, and out of school delivered leaflets.

she grew up in Cornwall and her father was friends with the former Poet laureate ted Hughes, who is said to have dedicated two poems to sasha. she used to go fishing with Hughes and her father.

With two brothers — Julian, a musician who later made millions composing the scores for Wallace And Gromit and Peppa Pig animated films, and William who is in the oil business — sasha was determined to win the approval of her father, to whom she was devoted.

‘she was like the pupil who always has their hand up in class trying to catch the teacher’s eye,’ says a Nott family friend. ‘she always wanted to impress her father.’

Her book, of course, will do just that. Nott cared little for party political sensibilities, once walking out of a tv interview with robin Day who had accused him of being a ‘here today, gone tomorrow politician’.

And he also walked out on Margaret thatcher by quitting the Commons to her dismay — though she refused to accept his resignation after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands and he oversaw the huge success of the British task force to liberate the islands.

‘He’s chomping at the bit to read the book,’ says the friend. ‘His attitude is “that’s my girl” and he won’t give a fig if it has upset some people in the tory Party.’

strikingly good looking, his adored daughter was sent to Cranborne Chase, the fee-paying girls’ school near tisbury, Wilts, which has since closed and was never noted for its academic qualities.

sasha is remembered as being ‘a cracker’ and the prettiest girl of her year.

If John Nott provided her political education, she inherited her sense of outrage from her slovenian mother Miloska, whose own background is heroic.

In the war, her father was a partisan, running a hotel where the Gestapo liked to eat by day, and smuggling Jews and others wanted by the Nazis to safety by night. Five months before the end of the war, he was caught and sent to Dachau concentration camp where he died.

Miloska met her husband in Cambridge, where she had been sent to learn English — at her engagement party to someone else.

In Nott’s memoir, Memorable Encounters, she recounted his exact words to her. ‘He said “I love you and I am going to marry you”, and then he went. I went home and wrote in my diary: “What a cheek, what a conceit, what a presumptuous male.” ’

NEVERTHELESS they were married in 1959, the year Nott was president of the Cambridge Union. ‘ Miloska is unbelievably frank, strong- minded, impetuous and forthright,’ says an acquaintance. ‘It’s clear that’s where sasha gets it all from.’

After leaving school, she launched herself with gusto on the london social scene. ‘she was always the life and soul of a party with a drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, having fun — and, with her looks, she had a queue of boys wanting to take her out,’ remembers a friend.

One event fondly recalled is a party at Admiralty Arch — which her father had the use of — at the time of the wedding of Charles and Diana, a venue which overlooked the route. she was also a regular at the then achingly hip Camden Palace party venue in North london.

But though portrayed as a dippy aristocrat — her title comes from swire’s knighthood, his consolation prize for not making the Cabinet — she was determined to make her own way and trained as a journalist, first in lincolnshire and then at the Nottingham Post, where an admirer was known as ‘Forest’ because of his love of the local football team.

By the early 1990s she was in Hong Kong where one article for the south China Morning Post had the headline: ‘Would you sleep with a stranger for $1 million?’ Notable citizens were asked for their opinions, including the late socialite David tang.

Back in london she became interested in political reporting and was often to be spotted with some of the livelier lobby correspondents. Another admirer was the architect and interior design guru Willie Nickerson, but until meeting swire there were no serious love matches.

AN OlD friend says: ‘ she was fantastically glamorous and one always felt she was looking for a suitable husband. Hugo was good looking and funny and, though they were not an obvious pairing, they hit it off.’

But money was always an issue. A businessman who sat next to her at a dinner recalls: ‘ she was extremely cross about the fact that politicians did not get enough money, saying that they should be paid more.’

Despite sharing his name with the famous swire business conglomerate, which owns Cathay Pacific, her husband is only distantly related and has no financial connection.

two years ago she confided to friends she had been keeping a diary and that she had written more than a million words since 2010. When swire stood down as an MP last year, she sought a publishing deal.

Not everyone is surprised by what she has done. One well-placed tory source said: ‘ she came to dinner once with a video camera wanting to record the evening. We had to tell her to switch it off. I thought then: “How odd. Is she doing a documentary about us?” ’

A former tory backbench colleague of swire told us: ‘sasha used to have a favourite phrase at the end of a week in Westminster: “What contributions do you have for our pension fund?” In other words, she wanted swire to reveal joyous indiscretions about life in the Cameron camp. He duly obliged.’

Her diaries may be unfair for their searing portrayal of the Cameron era as a frivolous, privileged elite playing at government but being more interested in sex and drinking. And for those who feature in the book’s pages it will be chiefly remembered for her grotesque breach of the etiquette of politics.

Frances Osborne, ex-wife of former Chancellor George Osborne, is understood to be dismayed at her depiction as a dull, downtrodden spouse. Both women grew up in the south West. she considered sasha a friend.

the diaries, however, with their mix of treachery and snobbery, will provide gleeful pleasure for readers. As for sasha swire, she is already planning her next publishing sensation — a novel she hopes to complete by Christmas.