Former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath has told how he was ''saddened'' when a girl he was close to married someone else nearly half a century ago.
Sir Edward has revealed his heartache in an autobiography, The Course of My Life, to be serialised in The Sunday Times.
The newspaper said yesterday that he has always refused to discuss rumours of a failed love affair, but now, at 82 - 20 years after the woman's death - he has written a poignant account of a chaste romance that survived wartime separation but foundered on his preoccupation with a political career.
The woman was Kay Raven, the daughter of a doctor in his home town of Broadstairs, Kent, and their friendship blossomed during school holidays.
Sir Edward wrote: ''She was a delightful girl and we shared many interests, including tennis and swimming as well as music.''
They corresponded frequently throughout the war, when he was moving around the country with the Royal Artillery Regiment and she was in the WAAF.
''After I returned home in 1946, we still remained separate because we were working in different parts of the country.
''One day she suddenly let me know that she was marrying someone else.
''I was saddened by this. I had been under such pressure, re-adapting myself to civil life and earning a living, that maybe I had taken too much for granted. I subsequently learnt that Kay had a happy life with her children, but we never met again.''
The newspaper quoted friends as saying the romance did not end until 1950.
Sir Edward had moved to London after the war, where he worked as a civil servant while seeking a political career.
In February 1950 he was elected to Parliament. That summer Kay went on holiday to Scotland and met Flight Lieutenant Richard Buckwell, whom she married.
After her husband left the RAF in 1960, they took up farming, and when Kay died of cancer in 1978, Sir Edward wrote a letter of condolence to her husband.
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