Jeremy Thorpe 1,166. After the 1966 election, Grimond confided to senior party officials that he wished soon to step down from the leadership. Thorpe was now the senior Liberal MP after Grimond, and the party's highest-profile member, although Timothy Beaumont, chairman of the party's organising committee, noted in his diary: "I am pretty certain that he has little popularity within the Parliamentary Party". When Grimond finally resigned, on 17 January 1967, an election to replace him was arranged to take place within 48 hours, leaving little time for manoeuvring. The 12 Liberal MPs formed the whole electorate; after the first ballot, Thorpe
Jeremy Thorpe by Terrance Dicks, both Liberal supporters, has an unseen, offscreen British Prime Minister named "Jeremy", which was intended by the production team as a reference to Thorpe. In 2009, the BBC attempted to film a TV biopic of Thorpe's life, slated to star Rupert Everett in the title role, but this was subsequently abandoned after legal threats from Thorpe. "A Very English Scandal", a true crime non-fiction novel covering the Thorpe/Scott affair, by John Preston, was published on 5 May 2016 by Viking Press. The book was described as "a political thriller, with urgent dialogue, well-staged scenes, escalating tension and