A hugely energetic man, Christopher Shale was a businessman who threw himself with gusto into the running of David Cameron’s constituency party, the West Oxfordshire Conservative Association. He did much to promote Cameron’s candidacy both for the seat of Witney and later for the leadership of the Conservative Party. In the course of their close and highly effective working partnership Shale became a significant figure in national as well as local Conservative politics.
Christopher Michael Henry Shale was born in Northamptonshire, the eldest of five children of a motorcar distributor, and was educated at Oakham School, where he was captain of cricket and also a keen rugby player despite being severely asthmatic and suffering the handicap by being born with only two fingers on his