ABSTRACT
Michael Dobbs is an English political novelist, and an experienced Tory politician. His trilogy about the villainous Scottish schemer Francis Urquhart—House of Cards (1990), To Play the King (1993), and The Final Cut (1995)—has been successfully adapted by the BBC (1990–1995) and by Netflix (2013–2019). The novels, inspired by controversial PM Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990), explore Urquhart’s patriarchal masculinity in relation to his political rise and fall. Dobbs focuses on the many secret vulnerabilities that plague Urquhart as a man, even after holding office as Prime Minister for a decade, and his fear of being exposed as a villain. Ageing, decadent Urquhart may elicit some sympathy, but Dobbs’s trilogy is, above all, a warning against the empowering of villainous patriarchal men by democracy, if only for a limited time.
