Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (157 page)
Read Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography Online
Authors: Charles Moore
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Biography, #Politics
A number of others were interviewed on the condition that they remain anonymous. For their help I am deeply grateful.
Scores more have helped in other ways:
– at Penguin Books, Richard Duguid and Rebecca Lee (editorial managers), Peter James (copy-editing), Christopher Phipps and Marian Aird (indexing), Stephen Ryan and Michael Page (proofreading), Ruth Pinkney, Taryn Jones and Rita Matos (production), Jim Stoddart (art direction), Lisa Simmons and Claire Mason (design), Donald Futers (assistant to Stuart Proffitt) and particularly Isabelle de Cat and Cecilia Mackay (picture research);
– all those who have helped with research. Of these, after Daniel Collings, the one who has put in the most hours is Dr David Shiels, an expert on Northern Ireland. I also, in the early days, employed Matthew Slater and later, from time to time, Peter Snowdon. Jo Dutton tracked down for me Margaret’s schoolgirl French penfriend (unfortunately deceased before discovered). This band of ‘irregulars’ produced excellent and vital work but, as the only person with security clearance for the government papers, I did the great bulk of the British research unaided. I must also thank my sister-in-law, Lucy Coventry, who brought precision to the whole text, and especially to the complicated task of the endnotes;
– while I was still editing the
Daily Telegraph
, I had virtually no time, but I did have a wonderful secretary in Frances Banks and the best driver in the world, Keith Lake. Both of them eased my Thatcher burden greatly. Nowadays, I am assisted at the
Daily Telegraph
by Pat Ventre. It is not her job to help with this book, but her constant support is a great comfort.
The person who has held the project together throughout is Virginia Utley, who was originally my secretary in the 1980s. From maintaining and updating all my contacts, to processing my manuscripts, to keeping order amongst evolving versions of the text, Virginia has proved as invaluable as ever. Her late father, T. E. ‘Peter’ Utley, is one of the dedicatees of this book. Peter Utley helped form me at the
Daily Telegraph
more than thirty years ago and gave me, with his subtle historical sense, my first understanding of the Thatcher phenomenon.
In all those years, I have always worked for the
Daily Telegraph
or the
Spectator
, or both, and I have covered the story of my subject from that vantage point. Mainly via these two publications, I learnt about the politics, culture and history of the Thatcher era from Bill Deedes, Colin Welch,
Alexander Chancellor, George Jones, Sarah Sands, Andrew Gimson and many more. I have had innumerable conversations – both ‘grave and gay’, as people used to say – with Ferdy Mount, Dean Godson, Nicholas Garland, who sees it all with an artist’s eye, and my dear friend Frank Johnson, who died before his time. All that talk informs this book. I must also thank my proprietor for most of my time as an editor, Conrad Black. He appointed me to two of my three main jobs, and kindly allowed me to take on the Thatcher contract despite my editorship of his main paper.
My thanks are also due to the present owners and management of the
Daily Telegraph
. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, and Sir David’s son, Aidan, have always been enthusiastic about my study of the woman they all admire. So have the chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, my editor, Tony Gallagher, and the deputy editor, Ben Brogan. They showed this by serializing the book. I am also grateful to Richard Preston, Chris Deerin and Robert Colville. All have been supportive throughout, even when Thatcherizing has threatened to get in the way of daily work. So has Fraser Nelson, the editor of the
Spectator
.
As well as formal interviews, conversation about my subject with political practitioners who are also friends has been of immense value. Many of these conversations took place before I knew I would be writing this book, but are no less helpful for that. I think particularly of William Waldegrave, the late Nick Budgen, Robert Salisbury, Frank Field, Norman Tebbit, Peter Carrington, Alistair McAlpine, Richard Ryder and the late Alan Clark. (The last was undoubtedly unreliable, but often brilliantly perceptive.)
Sir Martin Gilbert and Andrew Roberts, at my request, kindly advised me how to write a political biography.
I have also talked often and informally to people who knew the private Margaret Thatcher for many years, notably Caroline Ryder, Amanda Ponsonby, Romilly McAlpine, Cynthia Crawford and Carla Powell. Unstructured chat with such friends has helped me understand Mrs Thatcher, the woman.
Coming from a journalistic background, I knew much less about the civil service than about politics. It has been fascinating to talk to so many public servants of the Thatcher era. Because they are trained to take notes, they tend to have more accurate memories than politicians, who are forever rushing. The best witnesses to Mrs Thatcher’s working life were often her private secretaries, to most of whom I have spoken. In the period covered by this volume, I am particularly grateful to Sir Brian Cartledge, Sir John Coles, Sir Michael Scholar and Sir Clive Whitmore for the time they gave
me and the thought they put into it. I must also mention the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, whose precise mind and memory remain completely undimmed and whose supply of perceptive insights and anecdotes seems never to dry up. His successor, Lord Butler of Brockwell, has been equally helpful, chiefly with the second volume. Alan Petty has helped guide me towards the less visible parts of government.
In my Thatcher travels, I have been sustained by much hospitality. I am particularly grateful to Richard and Veronique Bowdler-Raynar, who invited me to stay at Schloss Freudenberg - almost the only place Mrs Thatcher would consent to visit for a holiday; Philip and Isabella Naylor-Leyland, at Milton, scene of the great Falklands rally; Charles and Carla Powell in the Campania; Romilly McAlpine in Venice; and Julian and Diana Seymour at Restharrow.
Richard and Kate Ehrman tolerantly kept a bed for me whenever I visited Oxford to consult archives or interview the retired civil servants who so often end up being Heads of Houses there. Richard and Kate also read and commented on my manuscript with great care, as did Noel Malcolm, Fellow of All Souls, Harold James, Professor of History and International Affairs at Princteon (all the material dealing with the economy), Andrew Riley, Archivist of the Thatcher Papers, my father, Richard Moore, and my father-in-law, Ralph Baxter. Kate Ehrman’s additional kindness was to hold my hand whenever I attempted to speak, read or listen to the French language.
Over many years, my most frequent talks about my subject have been with the Ehrmans, with Oliver and Isabel Letwin, and with Owen and Rose Paterson. In all these cases, the context has been friendships going back for more than 30 years. This is the best sort of talk, and I can never thank them enough. Oliver’s late mother, Shirley, is a dedicatee of this book.
My special thanks should go to Tommy, my hunter who jumps everything, and to Diana Grissell, MFH, who directs his care. They have been essential to my sanity.
Finally, I must thank my family, especially my sister, Charlotte, and my brother, Rowan. As far as I know, no Moore of my line, apart from me, has ever supported Margaret Thatcher. In many ways, this has been a good place for her biographer to start: in studying my subject I have enjoyed what feels like a forbidden pleasure. Besides, without my parents, Richard Moore and Ann Moore, I might never have learnt the fascination of history. This book is dedicated to them.
Our twins, Kate and William, were seven when this project began, and now they are adults. Except for the incident when Will lost the entire manuscript when playing, without permission, on my computer, they have been models of good behaviour and good fun. Because they were born in the last year of Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, they give me a perspective which someone like me, who first voted in 1979, would otherwise lack. My wife Caroline has been consistently loving and tolerant as I have spent so much time, for so long, with ‘the other woman’. I am more grateful to her than I can say.
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Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
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First published 2013
Copyright © Charles Moore, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Front cover photograph: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party Conference, Brighton, 1981. © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
All rights reserved
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-1-846-14649-7
*
This was a traditional form of charity. In George Eliot’s
Silas Marner
, Dolly Winthrop, the wheelwright’s wife, brings poor Marner some lard-cakes, imprinted with the initials of Jesus, giving the excuse that she has had a baking the day before and that the cakes are more than she needs.
*
This tradition of music mattered to the Roberts family. After he retired from his business, Alfred Roberts stayed with a friend and helped him repair the organ at Marston church. He wrote to Muriel about it: ‘It’s strange that I should be doing this sort of work following in the footsteps of the Roberts family’ (27 April 1961). When his widow, Cissie (Margaret’s stepmother), moved out of Allerton in 1982 she offered Margaret the piano.
*
Margaret herself recalled being envious of Catholic girls because of the ribbons they wore for First Communion. In her childhood, she said, a Methodist girl caught wearing ribbons would be told, ‘First step to Rome!’ (Correspondence with John O’Sullivan.)
†
Margaret was always very vague about the sacramental aspect of religion. When the present author asked her, at the baptism of Oliver Letwin’s twins (to one of whom she stood godmother), about the baptism of her own twins, she said perplexingly, ‘Oh well, they were christened, but they didn’t have the water.’
*
It is also true, however, that Margaret was a little embarrassed that she and Muriel always wore the outfits that their mother had designed for them. It made her self-conscious ‘that our things were different from others’ (Patricia Murray,
Margaret Thatcher
, W. H. Allen, 1980, p. 22).
*
Much excitement was caused in Grantham by the appearance – and then the suppression – in 1937 of a novel called
Rotten Borough
, by Julian Pine, the pseudonym for Oliver Anderson, the son of the vicar of Harlaxton, a neighbouring village. It is a spirited but nevertheless embarrassingly bad burlesque of English provincial life, with thinly veiled caricatures of local characters, including Lord and Lady Brownlow, the local grandees. In one incident in the book, the new paper in the borough, the
Weekly Probe
, exposes the conduct of a man named Tompkins, whom it calls ‘the Naughty Councillor’. The Naughty Councillor ensures that the High Street is lit by gas rather than electricity because he has shares in the gas company. He insists that the new lights be ‘erected smack outside’ his own grocer’s shop ‘on the Ground that it was situated at a very Dangerous Corner and would save a lot of lives, but really he thought it would sell a Lot of Hams, for He was a Grocer in a Big Way of Business’. One evening, says the
Probe
, Tompkins ‘thought he would have a Bit of Fun with one of the Young ladies who served behind the counter’ but is unluckily noticed doing so by passers-by, because he failed, in his haste, to draw the blind and is illuminated by the lights that he had himself installed. Tompkins then ‘hanged Himself with a pair of Woolworth’s braces in a Public Convenience’. It is widely believed, including by one witness who knew the author of
Rotten Borough
well (private information), that Tompkins was modelled on Alfred Roberts who, as well as being a grocer, with a shop on a busy corner, was involved in the running of the municipal gas company. There is, however, no proof, and there was certainly never any public scandal about Roberts.