Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Read Online Free PDF

certain kinds of procurement orders should be confirmed or cancelled. After a conversation that ranged across both strategic and specific considerations, it emerged that she was a cautious optimist about Russian intentions. ‘The Bear may get hungry and angry towards its neighbours, but not for a generation or two.’ 4 I agreed, and told her that as a result of her advice I would shortly be cancelling the £1 billion Spearfish torpedo programme. *
    At the end of this talk I said I would like to mention something rather personal. Taking a deep breath I began:
     
    We were last on our own together nearly thirteen years ago, and I have often thought that if we ever found ourselves in a one-on-one situation again then I would like to apologise to you. You see, I think I handled the break-up with Carol terribly badly. I am on good terms with her again, but I know I made such a mess of things that I upset you too as her mother. So I just wanted you to know that I am very sorry for that. 5
    Margaret Thatcher looked totally stunned. There was an awkward silence in which she seemed to be choking up. I understood this, knowing how difficultshe found any kind of personal or family matters. So I took my leave quickly, wondering whether I had made a mistake in reopening a painful memory.
    However, a week or two later Denis Thatcher came over to me at a large cocktail party and said, as we shook hands: ‘Thank you for what you said to Margaret the other day. She appreciated it a lot and so did I.’ 6
    From that moment onwards, my communications with Margaret Thatcher got better and better. I was a regular guest at her drinks and dinner parties, and she came to some of mine. She particularly enjoyed arguing over a meal with visiting foreign statesmen such as Henry Kissinger, Ghazi al Gosaibi of Saudi Arabia and HM the Sultan of Oman.
    On one occasion her arguing went completely over the top. Margaret and Denis came down to Sandwich Bay to stay the weekend with Julian and Diana Seymour. As their near neighbour I invited the Thatchers and the Seymours over for lunch. It was a disaster.
    Margaret had read a story in the Sunday papers about the deteriorating situation in Bosnia. So she arrived with her dander up to press the argument for immediate British military intervention. By this time I was in the cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So I parroted the Treasury line that such a commitment could lead to an unpredictably high cost to public expenditure. I might just as well have lit the blue touch paper to a barrel of gunpowder.
    In the explosions that followed, the table of Sunday lunch guests fell into cowed silence as Margaret denounced the ‘cowardice and the shame’ of our policy of non-intervention. One of her milder rhetorical questions was: ‘Are you ministers so weak that you are going to twiddle your thumbs while the Serbs inflict genocide?’ It did not help the temperature of the discussion when my Serbian-born wife, Lolicia, observed that most Serbs did not agree with genocide. More gunpowder exploded.
    Although I had caught glimpses of Margaret Thatcher in this kind of a mood back in her Leader of the Opposition days, I was startled by the ferocity of her anger. It was eventually curtailed by Denis taking advantage of a pause in the explosions to issue the quiet command, ‘Cut it out girl!’ Amazingly she did, making on abrupt and barely polite exit a few minutes later. ‘It’s not cricket to behave like that’, observed one of our guests, E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton, whose opinion carried some authority since he had been the chief cricket correspondent of the Daily Telegraph for many years. 7
    The outburst had an unexpected sequel. Perhaps realising that she had over-reacted, Margaret asked to see me in the House of Lords a few days later. Apologies were not her style but she went out of her way to be gracious and charming on a most unexpected subject – the choice of her official biographer. She said that she