Personality and background Urquhart is portrayed as having few other interests outside politics, though he is an avid reader of Italian Renaissance poetry and
Elizabethan/
Jacobean drama, with
John Webster and
Cyril Tourneur being among his favorite authors. He frequently quotes
William Shakespeare, particularly
Macbeth. The first novel reveals that his father committed suicide, and that his mother disowned him after he decided to go into politics rather than maintain the family estate. Urquhart was educated at
Fettes (although he often wears an
Old Etonian tie in the BBC adaptation) where, although not noted for brilliance, he was recognised for his diligence and industriousness. He joined the British Army at age 18, and spent three years in
Cyprus, where he was commended for bravery in his capture and interrogation of
EOKA terrorists. Urquhart resigned his
commission after a colleague was
court-martialed for accidentally killing a suspect, and took up a deferred place at the
University of Oxford reading History, where he narrowly missed getting a
First. He later taught
Renaissance Italian History at the university, becoming an authority on the
Medici and
Machiavelli. He married
Elizabeth McCullough, the eldest daughter of a whisky magnate named William McCullough, in 1960. By the time of
House of Cards, Urquhart has long abandoned academia in favour of politics, having steadily risen to the position of
Chief Whip. Urquhart's foreign policy is
Anglocentric; he thinks that Britain has more to teach the world, and Europe in particular, than the other way around. He would like to see the rest of the
European Union speaking English – a position that would then completely alienate
Foreign Secretary Tom Makepeace. Besides this, his strong belief in discipline and the rule of law shapes his foreign policy in Cyprus, where he authorises the use of force against schoolgirls who are blocking military vehicles. ==Other incarnations==