If I had £100,000, I would buy this picture of Margaret Thatcher

Socrates was never wider of the mark than when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living. He brushes aside some of the best lives ever led – if, that is, by ‘best’ we mean productive and by ‘unexamined’ we mean unexamined by the individual himself. This reflection occurred to me as I explored an exhibition (closing this Saturday, 17 May) at the Blue Gallery in London. Thatcher: An Exhibition of New Contemporary Art is a small collection of specially commissioned works of art and design inspired by Margaret Thatcher.

‘Good Heavens,’ she would say. ‘What nonsense is this?’ She wouldn’t see the point. She hardly ever writes or talks of her feelings, her doubts, her joys or sadnesses. She does not find herself half as interesting as we do.

It is a characteristic of many tremendously valuable people that their whole lives have been gripped by a sense of external purpose.