7. Emerging from hospital in Windsor, in August 1983, after an operation for a detached retina. She had thought she was going blind.
8. Returning to Downing Street with shopping, October 1983. She liked to play up to the role of housewife-superstar.
9. Cecil Parkinson fights for his political life at the party conference in Blackpool, October 1983. John Gummer, his replacement as party chairman, is next to Mrs Thatcher. Behind him is Parkinson’s wife, Ann. The next day, Parkinson resigned.
10. Helmut Kohl and Mrs Thatcher inspect a guard of honour during her visit to West Germany in November 1983. Even at this early stage, and despite their shared conservative politics, they were not close.
11. François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl showing reconciliation on the battlefield of Verdun, September 1984. Asked if she found it moving, Mrs Thatcher replied: ‘No, I did not. Two grown men holding hands!’
12. At Yuri Andropov’s funeral in Moscow in February 1984, Mrs Thatcher meets his already ailing successor as Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko. Her dignified bearing at the freezing ceremonies made a powerful impression on the Soviets.
13. Mrs Thatcher receives the South African Prime Minister, P. W. Botha, at Chequers, June 1984. She urged him to consider releasing Nelson Mandela, but opposed isolating the white regime.
14. Neil Kinnock (right), Labour leader since 1983, with Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, at the Durham Miners’ Gala in July 1984. Kinnock was torn between solidarity with the striking miners and dismay that Scargill would not call a strike ballot.
15. The Coal Board chairman, Ian MacGregor, plays a joke with the media as they catch him attending a secret meeting with the NUM in September 1984. His behaviour was considered embarrassing.
16. Lines of police confront the NUM pickets at the Orgreave coking works on 18 June 1984. The controversial defeat of the pickets’ attempt to prevent supplies leaving the plant was a turning point against Arthur Scargill in the strike. The NUM were incensed by police tactics.
17. Speaking at Banbury market, 30 May 1984, Mrs Thatcher passionately condemns picket-line violence at Orgreave: ‘an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law’.
18. The Energy Secretary, Peter Walker. He and Mrs Thatcher neither liked nor trusted one another, but she respected his abilities. Between them, they ran the politics of the miners’ strike successfully.
19. Miners in Armthorpe, South Yorkshire, vote to return to work without an agreement, March 1985. Scargill’s intransigence prevented any deal being done and helped ensure the government’s complete victory that month.
20. Mother and daughter. Mrs Thatcher takes six hours off over the Bank Holiday weekend, May 1984, to help Carol decorate her new house – a rare moment of shared domesticity.
21. Mother and son. Mrs Thatcher, suitably dressed for her holiday at Imlau, Austria, in August 1985, receives a slice of cake from Mark to celebrate his thirty-second birthday.
22. Mark’s wedding reception at the Savoy Hotel, February 1987. He married Diane Burgdorf, a Texan. The couple, who had a son and a daughter, were to divorce in 2005.
23. The very special relationship: President Ronald Reagan is welcomed by his greatest ally at the London Economic Summit, June 1984. Nancy Reagan stands between them.
24. Mrs Thatcher turns away from European partners at the Fontainebleau European Council, June 1984. It was here that she at last prevailed in the five-year row about the British contribution to the European Community. The other member states would get their own back on her later.
25. Denis and Margaret dressed up for the Conservative Agents’ Ball at the party conference in Brighton, October 1984. A few hours later, an IRA bomb went off in their hotel.
26. Still dressed in her ballgown, Mrs Thatcher is driven with Denis (in pyjamas) from the Grand Hotel after the bomb went off at 2.54 a.m., accompanied by her assistant Cynthia Crawford (‘Crawfie’).
27. Sir Keith Joseph, the Education Secretary, stands with police on the Brighton seafront in his silk dressing-gown after the bomb.
28. Norman Tebbit, the Trade and Industry Secretary, is dragged from the wreckage of the Grand by firemen. He was seriously injured. His wife Margaret was paralysed for life by the bomb.
29. John Wakeham, the Chief Whip, is taken to hospital. His legs were severely injured. His wife, Roberta, died in the blast.
30. The bathroom in the Thatchers’ hotel suite after the bomb. Luckily for them both, the damage to bedroom and sitting-room was much less.
31. The front of the Grand Hotel after the explosion. Only one vertical section of the building’s construction, which did not include Mrs Thatcher’s suite, was destroyed.
32. In memory. The Prime Minister, flanked by Willie Whitelaw (left) and the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, observes silence at the conference to honour the victims the morning after the bomb. Later in the day she delivered her platform speech.
33. With Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, at the Commonwealth conference in 1983. The two women were on good terms. Less than a month after Mrs Thatcher had survived the Brighton bomb, Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by two members of her own bodyguard in Delhi.
34. All in one week (i): The man she could do business with. Mrs Thatcher stands at the door of Chequers with Mikhail Gorbachev, then the Soviet heir apparent, in December 1984, their first meeting. The two became so engrossed in their astonishingly frank discussions that he was two hours late for his next appointment.
35. (ii): On the way to Peking with Geoffrey Howe to sign the Hong Kong Agreement. On this subject, her grit and his emollience proved an effective combination.
36. (iii): Within spitting distance (note the bowl), Mrs Thatcher and the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, discuss the future of Hong Kong much more amicably than when they met two years earlier. Their interpreters, and William Ehrman (right) of the British Embassy, sit behind.
37. (iv): Mrs Thatcher flies on to Hong Kong from China. Her headphones are upside down to avoid disturbing her hair.
38. (v): With Sir Edward Youde, the Governor of Hong Kong, Bernard Ingham and Howe, Mrs Thatcher attempts to explain the agreement to Hong Kong people. It was not an easy sell, but the deal survived.
39. (vi): Charles Powell carries her despatch box on to the plane from Hong Kong to Washington. She stayed awake for the entire journey to be prepared for her meeting with Reagan.
40. (vii): The President steers his guest in a golf buggy round Camp David. She was terrified of his driving but successful in their talks.
41. (viii): Ready to celebrate, Mrs Thatcher and Bernard Ingham pull a Christmas cracker on the flight home.
42. (ix): On the same flight, a rare moment of clowning with the press.
43. Anti-Thatcher protestors gather in Oxford, January 1985. Senior members of the university voted to refuse its most famous living graduate an honorary degree. Denis said that nothing hurt her more in her whole time in office.
44. Buckingham, the first independent university, treated her more generously. Here she receives its honorary doctorate in 1986.
45. In May 1985, Mrs Thatcher addresses a joint session of both Houses of Congress, the first British prime minister to do so since Winston Churchill. Behind her are the Speaker, Tip O’Neill, and the Vice-President, George Bush.
46. Her closest servants (i): Charles Powell, foreign affairs private secretary, 1984–90, physically one step behind, but mentally right beside her. Here they confront the Italian ‘ambush’ at the Milan summit 1985.
47. (ii): Robert Armstrong, Cabinet Secretary, 1979-87, entertaining Mrs Thatcher at home to mark his retirement. She respected him very much, but did not agree with him about Ireland.
48. (iii): Robin Butler, principal private secretary, 1982–85, between his boss and the US Secretary of State, George Shultz. Butler found that talking to her socially was ‘like feeding a fierce animal’.
49. Mrs Thatcher and Garret Fitzgerald, the Irish Pri
me Minister, present one another with the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Hillsborough Castle, November 1985. She was uneasy about what she was doing. Behind them, left to right, are Dermot Nally, the Irish Cabinet Secretary, Tom King, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Geoffrey Howe and a painting of Windsor Castle.
50. Mrs Thatcher puts her feet on the sofa – her only concession to informality – and studies her red boxes. It is just after nine o’clock at night – very early for her.
51. Michael Heseltine, ex-Defence Secretary, arrives with characteristic brio at the Westland heliport, Battersea, 12 January 1986. Three days earlier, he had resigned in Cabinet over the Westland crisis.
52. Leon Brittan, Trade and Industry Secretary, leaves a Cabinet meeting on 16 January 1986. On 24 January he too resigned.
53. Colette Bowe, Brittan’s chief press secretary, on the day of his resignation. She was instructed to leak the Solicitor-General’s letter. She could probably have brought the Thatcher government down, but refrained.
54. On the same day, Mrs Thatcher shows the strain. The following week, she finally routed those trying to get her out over Westland.
55. With Prince Bandar and the Downing Street Christmas tree, December 1984. He and she persuaded King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to agree the Al-Yamamah deal – the biggest defence contract in British history.
56. With Sultan Qaboos of Oman, 1982. He was a good friend of Britain in the Gulf, but Mark Thatcher’s business relations with his entourage brought her own judgement into question.
57. ‘The plucky little King’. Hussein of Jordan, here on her visit to his country in September 1985, was Mrs Thatcher’s favourite Middle Eastern monarch. She tried, but failed, to help him achieve a breakthrough in the Israel-Palestine dispute.
58. With the Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres, in Jerusalem, May 1986. She was a true, if cautious, friend of Israel.
59. Mrs Thatcher deploys her arts of flattery on King Fahd in London in 1987. He found her extremely attractive.
60. ‘Thy rod and thy staff comfort me’. On holiday with Denis in Imlau, Austria, August 1984. Back home, the miners’ strike raged.
61. ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council, marks its demise on the last day of March 1986 with a defiant party. Mrs Thatcher abolished it, setting Livingstone on his career as her cheekiest opponent.
62. In the middle of the road for once, the Prime Minister opens the M25 motorway round London in October 1986.
63. In 1985, the Thatchers bought 11 Hambledon Place, Dulwich, as their private house, almost on a whim. It was not a success: she found it too far from Parliament and Denis did not like the golf course.
64. On holiday in Cornwall, August 1986, with a borrowed dog. Margaret always wanted a pet, but Denis would not allow it. Her bandaged hand is the result of a recent operation for Dupuytren’s contracture.
65. Mrs Thatcher and President Mitterrand agree the Channel Tunnel project in the chapter house of Canterbury cathedral, February 1986. She was seduced by Mitterrand’s idea for ‘something exciting’.
66. Camp David again, November 1986. She felt she had succeeded in steering Reagan back to the need for a credible nuclear deterrent after the near-disaster of his Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev.
67. Watching the British Army of the Rhine on manoeuvres in West Germany, September 1986. Helmut Kohl is half-obscured by a British military arm.
68. Denis and Mrs Thatcher receive the Queen in Downing Street, October 1985, for a dinner to mark the 250th anniversary of No. 10 as the prime minister’s residence. Always deferential to the monarch, Mrs Thatcher curtsies very low.
69. The Commonwealth Review Conference, Marlborough House, London, August 1986. Left to right, Brian Mulroney (Canada), Bob Hawke (Australia), MT, Sir Lynden Pindling (Bahamas), The Queen, Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Sir ‘Sonny’ Ramphal (Commonwealth Secretary-General), Rajiv Gandhi (India), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe). Mrs Thatcher was isolated over South African sanctions.
70. Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer from the start of the second term, and economic mastermind of the period. She admired him greatly, but considered him ‘a gambler’.
71. David Young (Lord Young of Graffham). He tackled unemployment and held Mrs Thatcher’s hand through the 1987 election campaign, to the irritation of Norman Tebbit.
72. Clever young men (i): Oliver Letwin, the Policy Unit’s youngest brainbox.
73. (ii): John Redwood, successful head of the Policy Unit, 1983–5, and privatization expert.
74. (iii): William Waldegrave, mastermind of the poll tax.
75. Oleg Gordievsky, the most important double agent Britain ever had in the KGB. After he defected, Mrs Thatcher called him ‘Mr Collins’, for security reasons.
76. Laurens van der Post, South African writer, guru and flatterer of the mighty. He influenced her against sanctions.
77. Brian Walden, ex-Labour MP. He was the television interviewer who understood her best.
78. Rupert Murdoch (right), with Kelvin Mackenzie, editor of his paper, the Sun, on the day it was first printed at Wapping in January 1986. Without Mrs Thatcher, Murdoch believed, he could not have beaten the print unions.
79. Woodrow Wyatt, chairman of the Tote and columnist in the News of the World and The Times (both Murdoch-owned). She took his calls most Sundays.
80. David Hart, the most irregular of her ‘Irregulars’. He fought the miners’ strike from Claridge’s and gave her inside information on the working miners.
81. Moscow, March 1987 (i): In beige suede boots and sable coat, Mrs Thatcher visits St Sergius monastery, Zagorsk.
82. (ii): Lighting a candle in the church at Zagorsk. Being a good Methodist, she did not know what to do with it.
83. (iii): Laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Moscow.
84. (iv): Mrs Thatcher visits workers’ housing in Moscow. She got a hero’s reception from the crowds.
85. (v): With Gorbachev in the Kremlin. Neither of them could stop talking.
86. An election press conference in Glasgow in 1987. A rate revaluation threatened to wipe the Tories out in Scotland. With her is Malcolm Rifkind, the Scottish Secretary.
87. Mrs Thatcher takes command in a Lancashire biscuit factory, for campaigning purposes, May 1987.
88. Striding out in her constituency, Finchley – but her steps in the campaign were often uncertain.
89. The winners: on election night, at the window of Conservative Central Office, Mrs Thatcher at last gives Norman Tebbit his due.
90. Victorious in Whitehall.
91. With Tim Bell (in later years). By secretly bringing him back to help her win in 1987, she caused bad feeling in her team.
92. Safely home: Denis and Mrs Thatcher begin their third stint in No. 10, 12 June 1987.
Bibliography
PRIMARY SOURCES
Manuscript collections (UK)
Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge
The papers of Baroness Thatcher (THCR)
The papers of Sir Alan Walters (WTRS)
The National Archives, Kew
Cabinet Office Papers (CAB)
Prime Minister’s Papers (PREM)
Manuscript collections (abroad)
Archives Nationales de France, Paris
The Archives of the United Nations, New York, NY
The George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, College Station, TX
The Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA
The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
The National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
The National Archives of Ireland, Dublin
Papers of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)
Papers of the Department of the Taoiseach (TAOIS)
The National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, DC
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA
Selected online resources
The American Presidency Project (ht
tp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/)
CAIN Web Service, University of Ulster (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/)
Hansard (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/)
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb.com)
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation (www.margaretthatcher.org)
Who’s Who Online (http://www.ukwhoswho.com)
Witness seminars
‘Britain and South Africa, 1985–91’, Witness Seminars, 23 January 2009, IDEAS, London School of Economics (ed. M. D. Kandiah) (http://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/witness_seminars_pretoria)
‘The British Response to SDI’, seminar held on 9 July 2003, Centre for Contemporary British History, Senate House, University of London (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/icbh/witness/PDFfiles/SDI.pdf)
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