They also reveal Chancellor Denis Healey and Industry Secretary Tony Benn at odds over policy.

BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Nuclear secrets of 1975 revealed

Had the crown gone to Denis Healey, his rival, Labour's 18-year spell in the cold might have been truncated.

ECONOMIST: Gordon Brown's next six months

The chancellor Denis Healey's contemptuous treatment of his Liberal opposite number and ostensible colleague, John Pardoe, has become the stuff of political legend.

ECONOMIST: The party is either being very clever, or very stupid

There was Lord Jenkins himself, then plain Woy, in possession of a first-class degree from Balliol College, Oxford, like his colleague Denis Healey.

ECONOMIST: Sometimes too many brains can go to your head

And so David Miliband joins Michael Heseltine, Denis Healey, Kenneth Clarke, David Davis and many others who, for one reason or another, nearly made it.

BBC: Miliband joins list of political 'nearly men'

Our home secretary is a member of that select club of politicians (founder members Denis Healey and Ken Clarke) who would cross the road to pick a fight.

BBC: Thursday 24 April

In doing so, he inadvertently destroyed the chance of Denis Healey, a fellow right-winger, to succeed him and allowed Tony Benn's constituency Jacobins to spread their terror through the party.

ECONOMIST: Obituary

Callaghan resigned in 1980 and Labour MPs elected Foot as their leader in preference to the candidate of the right, Denis Healey, some said because they hoped for a quiet life.

BBC: The Michael Foot story

Moreover, stuck for a party crowd-pleaser, the first resort of a Labour politician used to be a sideswipe at fat cats: remember a Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, promising to squeeze the wealthy until the pips squeaked?

ECONOMIST: Tony Blair��s business affair

The Tories have warned that spiralling state debt could force the government to follow in the footsteps of Labour former chancellor Denis Healey, who approached the IMF for a bailout as the economy struggled in the 1970s.

BBC: Brown dismisses IMF bailout talk