My last column discussed Lady Thatcher and drink. It is now time to move on to sex. But there is little to say. Hard as it may be for moderns to contemplate, she was uxorious. A million years ago, in her days in opposition, I was in the House having a drink with an elderly Tory MP when she swept past. His already rheumy voice thickened with sentiment. ‘Ishn’t she a lovely little thing,’ he mused (not quite how I would have described the leader of our party). ‘But you should have sheen her when she first arrived. Oh, she was sho beautiful. We all tried to [have our wicked way with] her. None of us got anywhere.’ Back in 1959, when the competition was Bessie Braddock and Dame Irene Ward, she must indeed have looked like a film star.
Properly behaved herself, she was tolerant of others’ lapses, if sometimes a little naive. Once, at a shadow cabinet meeting, a colleague’s behaviour planted a doubt in her mind. Norman St John-Stevas rose, and apologised for leaving early; he was going to the Royal Academy dinner. ‘But Norman, I’m also going to the Academy dinner. And I’ve got two meetings after this shadow cabinet.’ ‘Ah, yes, Margaret; it takes me longer to change than it does you.’ Shortly afterwards, she asked the girls in her office whether Norman really was one of them and was astonished to be told that she must have been the last person in Parliament — in Britain — to notice.
The naiveté extended to language, as is well-documented: every prime minister needs a Willie, et al. Back in the days when Willie Whitelaw was indeed her stalwart in the battle against Jim Callaghan’s Labour party, I once heard her say: ‘I’ve told Willie he must cancel his lunch tomorrow, because I must leave someone in charge.
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