Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (134 page)

5. The girls who matriculated at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1943. Margaret Roberts is third from left, back row.

6. Tony Bray, Margaret’s first love, outside the Radcliffe Camera, Oxford. He was an undergraduate at Brasenose College. ‘He’s a weird-looking chap to cart around the place,’ she wrote to her sister Muriel.

7. The wedding breakfast of Margaret’s schoolfriend Shirley Ellis (
née
Walsh) in Grantham in 1947. Margaret sits on the further table to the right, in a distinctive little hat.

8. Tony Bray in the uniform of the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, probably in 1946: ‘a cavalry regiment, green trousers, all the rest of it’.

9. Anti-socialist siren: Margaret Roberts, the new Conservative candidate, plays the piano to voters in the Bull Inn, Dartford, 1949.

10. Margaret the scientist, working for J. Lyons, the food company. This picture was published at the beginning of the 1950 general election campaign: she was the youngest candidate for any party.

11. Margaret’s first ever election address in Dartford, 1950. She cut the Labour majority by 6,000.

12. Looking up to Lord Woolton, the Conservative Party Chairman, at a briefing for the 1951 general election campaign at Church House, Westminster. Her rapport with older, powerful men is already evident.

13. The bridesmaid at her sister Muriel’s wedding in April 1950. Muriel married Margaret’s former boyfriend, William Cullen. Alfred Roberts is in the middle, Beatrice Roberts on the right.

14. Robert Henderson outside Buckingham Palace after being invested with the CBE in 1947 for his services to medicine. ‘I think we are both getting very fond of each other,’ Margaret wrote, ‘– in fact more than that.’

15. The power of the handbag. Margaret Roberts, as candidate, queues for the autograph of the actress Patricia Dainton at a Dartford fête in 1951. The bag with her initials on it was given to her by Willie Cullen.

16. The story of the bag: Margaret tells Muriel why she will ‘have to hang on with William for a while longer now!’

17. ‘Not a frightfully attractive creature’ – Margaret gives Muriel her impression of first meeting Denis, ‘a Major Thatcher … (age about 36, plenty of money)’, after the night of 28 February 1949.