Margaret thatcher

Yesterday

Nikhil Krishnan

Were Britain’s postwar dons just having too much fun?

A history of academic life stands and falls by the number and quality of its anecdotes. On this count, Colin Kidd’s Twilight of the Dons unquestionably delivers. Did you know that the biologist Francis Crick wrote to Winston Churchill suggesting that an educational institution named after the statesman would be better off with a college brothel than the proposed chapel? Or that Eleanor Plumer, an early principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford, told the fellows of her fledgling institution that if they simply must have children, could they ‘kindly ensure’ they had them ‘in the University vacation’? At times, the book can seem to be an anthology of such anecdotes,

Thursday

David Kynaston

The ups and downs of high-rise living

‘On BBC 2 last Monday,’ noted the Sunday Telegraph’s TV critic Trevor Grove in February 1979, ‘the return of Fawlty Towers was immediately followed by a programme about faulty towers.’ He went on: This was odd, but on close examination turned out to be without significance. After all, what connection could there possibly be between a comedy series based on the exploits of a domineering, havoc-wreaking megalomaniac called Basil Fawlty and a serious study of what has been done to Britain’s urban environment by a bunch of domineering, havoc-wreaking megalomaniacs who call themselves architects? The programme was Christopher Booker’s still remembered City of Towers, a ferocious attack on Le Corbusier-inspired

Thursday

Joan Collins

The day James Blunt stripped off in front of me

The beautiful British actress Samantha Eggar has died in LA. I hope that will be the last in a spate of deaths among friends and celebrities in the past three months. First it was Terence Stamp, the handsome actor who starred with Samantha in The Collector, which made them both into stars. Then the legendary Robert Redford, whose many fabulous performances in exceptional movies make today’s film output look positively anaemic. The Way We Were, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and Indecent Proposal are just a few of the brilliantly entertaining films he starred in. I met him only once, on a flight from New York to

Thursday

Taki

The irreplaceable Lady Annabel Goldsmith

During Jane Austen’s time, their roles would be reversed. Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who left us last week at 91, would be Darcy, with Mark Birley and Sir James Goldsmith as Elizabeth Bennet. Both her husbands were womanisers, well-born, but of inferior birth to her. I met her around 60 years ago, and she was as aristocratic as they come, and as down to earth as her puckish irreverence would take her. A quick smirk, a raised eyebrow would turn into something prurient and funny. Wonderfully mischievous, she enjoyed revving it up when the Austro-Australian Princess Michael would complain about me at Annabel’s annual summer party. Annabel would listen to the

Sunday

Charles Moore

How did faith shape Thatcher?

38 min listen

How did faith shape Margaret Thatcher’s politics? To mark the centenary month of Margaret Thatcher’s birth, Damian Thompson introduces a conversation between the Spectator’s Natasha Feroze, Thatcher’s biographer Lord Moore and Bishop Chartres who delivered the eulogy at her funeral. They discuss her relationship with faith, how both her family background and her training as a scientist influenced her beliefs and her understanding of the relationship between wealth and society based on Jesus’s parables. Plus – what would Thatcher have made of the much talked about ‘Christian revival’ in the West? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

Thursday

Charles Moore

The frustrations of the Tory mindset

‘The facts of life are Conservative.’ This sentence is often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, whose centenary falls next week. The exact words are ‘The facts of life invariably do turn out to be Tory’ and were not hers. They appeared in the first major policy document produced under her leadership, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976). The author was probably Chris Patten, the document’s drafter and more of a ‘wordsmith’ – her coinage – than she. (There might even have been a deliberate Patten double-entendre of the sort that always escaped Mrs T since, in those days, the phrase ‘the facts of life’ meant the sex lessons given by embarrassed parents and

Thursday

William Atkinson

The Tories must free themselves from the cult of Thatcher

Like every Tory Boy, I had a Margaret Thatcher poster. I put it up when I was 15 and had just joined the party. Above my bed, resplendent in blue, the Iron Lady glowered down at my teddies. Naturally, it came down when I first brought home a girlfriend. For any young Tories lacking in Thatcher tat, this week’s Conservative party conference will provide plenty of opportunities for purchasing some. It (almost) coincides with the 100th anniversary of Thatcher’s birth on 13 October. The occasion has been heralded by a series of think-tank initiatives, dinners and conferences and the release of a one-volume edition of Charles Moore’s biography. The Iron

Thursday

William Moore

Royal treatment, neurodiverse history & is everyone on Ozempic?

45 min listen

First: a look ahead to President Trump’s state visit next week Transatlantic tensions are growing as the row over Peter Mandelson’s role provides an ominous overture to Donald Trump’s state visit next week. Political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence. ‘The one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. And government figures fear he may go off message on broadcast – he is scheduled to be interviewed by GB News. It is rare for leaders to receive a second visit, especially those in their second term. But, as Tim says, ‘Britishness is

Ross Clark

Autism isn’t a ‘superpower’

A very warm welcome for Margaret Thatcher inside autism’s ever-growing tent – if she can find space to wield her handbag. I could even lead the welcoming party myself as I am in there – according to some of my friends – on account of my unusually good ability to recall dates and a liking for solitude. As for Thatcher, she has gained entry on the strength of her biographer Tina Gaudoin’s diagnosis, which is based around the former PM’s absence of a sense of humour (or at least an inability to share the jokes of her male, public school-educated colleagues), a lack of embarrassment, her ‘special or restricted interests’

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Is God a Thatcherite?

Autumn: surely one of the most beautiful words in the language. All the other seasons are expressive, almost even onomatopoeic, worthy of being serenaded by Vivaldi, but autumn has a gentle resonance. Mists and mellow fruitfulness, not to mention the grouse season. School and university accustomed most of us to think of the year beginning at the Michaelmas term rather than in January. This is reinforced now that parliament is back – though with Sir Stumbler in charge, it is more a matter of fogs and sour fruitlessness. That brings up memories of a different era, one which was immensely fruitful though never mellow. The 100th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s

Gareth Roberts

The glorious campness of Reform

It’s a very serious and rancorous time in Britain. Social strife is simmering. The asylum system is at breaking point. The lines on the economics graphs are all going in unsettling directions – the ones you’d prefer to see going down are going up, and vice versa. And inevitably the Overton window is shifting. Though perhaps not in the way any of us expected. Reform is currently odds-on to form the next government. Nigel Farage’s party meets for its conference in Birmingham this week at 35 per cent in the polls. But that’s not because it’s bracingly right-wing. Or not just. It’s because Reform is camp. At a time when

Thursday

The Spectator

Norman Tebbit was the symbol of an age 

Norman Tebbit, who died this week aged 94, was a self-made man who shouldered his way to the top of a party of old Etonians. He was, to many, the leather-clad bovver boy of Spitting Image, ordering the unemployed to get ‘on yer bike’. He was a devoted husband who stepped back from politics to care for his wife, Margaret, after they were pulled from the wreckage of Brighton’s Grand Hotel. And he was an unrepentant right-winger, who was unflinching about where his party had gone wrong, and unforgiving to the monsters who had put his wife in a wheelchair. This Middlesex grammar school boy turned airline pilot, turned cabinet

John Whittingdale

Norman Tebbit transformed the country for the better

My first job in government was working for Norman Tebbit as his special adviser in the Department of Trade and Industry. I received the call 41 years ago, in the summer of 1984, and it was agreed that I would join him immediately after the Conservative party conference concluded that year in Brighton. He was already a hero of the Margaret Thatcher government. But few saw as close up as I did just how much courage – and compassion – Norman, who died this week aged 94, had. On the final day of that conference, in the early hours, an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel. Republican terrorists had

Thursday

Iain Dale

From Thatcher to Truss, who’s haunting Mel Stride?

17 min listen

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivered a speech today where he attempted to banish the ghost of Liz Truss and improve the Conservatives’ reputation over fiscal credibility. And he compared leader Kemi Badenoch to Thatcher, saying she too struggled at first and will ‘get better’ at the dispatch box. LBC broadcaster Iain Dale and the Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons join deputy political editor James Heale to unpack Stride’s speech, talk about Labour’s latest policy announcement over free school meals and discuss why both the main parties are struggling with fiscal credibility. Plus, Iain talks about his new book Margaret Thatcher and the myths he seeks to dispel. Why does he

Thursday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Prepare to feel nauseous at this School Dinners exhibition

If your stomach turns when you walk past a Japanese restaurant with moulded plastic replicas of sushi on display, prepare to feel even more nauseous in the School Dinners exhibition at the Food Museum in Stowmarket, Suffolk. Here, moulded in that same plastic, in (if anything) even more garish colours, you’ll see a sample two-course school dinner from each decade from the 1940s to the 2020s. If orange PVC cod’s roe looks a bit disgusting, a heap of pale, lumpy, plastic 1970s mashed potato with over-boiled carrots is even worse. The sample plate from the 1940s contains chunks of dark brown liver polluting the inside of a jacket potato. (I’m

Friday

Kirsty Wark

The Kirsty Wark Edition

30 min listen

Kirsty Wark has worked for the BBC for almost 50 years and is one of the UK’s most recognisable broadcasters. In 1976 she joined BBC Radio Scotland as a graduate researcher. Having produced and presented several shows across radio including The World At One and PM, she switched to television, and went on to present shows such as Breakfast Timeand The Late Show. However, she is best known for presenting BBC Newsnight for over 30 years, which saw her interview key political and cultural leaders. Having stood down after the 2024 election, she now presents Front Row, The Reunion, and documentaries like Icons of Style.  On the podcast, Kirsty tells Katy about her father fighting in the D-Day landings, changing

Saturday

James Heale

Kemi vs Nigel: who would Thatcher have backed?

15 min listen

It is 50 years since Margaret Thatcher was elected Conservative leader, and at this week’s shadow cabinet meeting, Lord Forsyth was invited as a guest speaker to mark the occasion. He noted the similarities between 1975 and 2025. Back then, the party was broke, reeling from defeat and facing the fallout from a reorganisation of local government. But, despite threadbare resources, Thatcher managed to rebuild to win power four years later. ‘You have the potential to do the same,’ Forsyth told Kemi Badenoch. However, when asked if a young Thatcher would have been drawn to the right’s insurgent Reform Party, Nigel Farage replied, ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about

Thursday

James Heale

Kemi vs. Nigel: who would Thatcher have backed?

It is 50 years since Margaret Thatcher was elected Tory leader and at this week’s shadow cabinet meeting, Lord Forsyth was invited as guest speaker to mark the occasion. He noted the similarities between 1975 and 2025. Back then the party was broke, reeling from defeat and facing the fallout from a reorganisation of local government. But, despite threadbare resources, Thatcher managed to rebuild to win power four years later. ‘You have the potential to do the same,’ Forsyth told Kemi Badenoch. Yet there is a crucial difference between then and now: a rival on the right. Nigel Farage’s Reform party is vying with Badenoch to inherit Thatcher’s mantle. Each

Saturday

James Innes-Smith

Steve Coogan should stick to comedy

How amusing to hear Steve Coogan and Emily Maitlis pontificate about the dreaded ‘establishment’ on Maitlis’s News Agents podcast recently. During a discussion about Coogan’s role as Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie – Channel 4’s two-part drama about Walden’s final, sensational interview with Margaret Thatcher in 1989 – the comedian admits that although he identifies with Thatcher’s lower-middle-class background, he had concerns that the script might make her seem too sympathetic. Heaven forbid. Coogan considers the drama to be as much about class as a lament for long-form interviews, suggesting that intelligent outsiders such as Walden, Thatcher and indeed Coogan himself will always struggle to break through the cut-glass ceiling.  

Thursday

Charles Moore

My message to the Trumpists

Social media benefit from creating continuous belligerence in politics. For them, Donald Trump is the perfect politician. As I wrote last week, I think he is doing exciting things and I feel relieved that Kamala Harris lost. But it is impossible to support everything Mr Trump says or does. He never regards himself as bound by what he has previously said, so why should his followers seek to justify each piece of Trumpery? Since his victory in November, I have noticed several otherwise intelligent friends, all of them men, going crazy-culty about the dawning era – defending, for example, the removal of the security detail of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton