The Spectator

Lady Thatcher’s club Sir: Charles Moore’s excellent paragraph (Notes, 20 April) on Baroness Thatcher’s life achievement in the context of much less social advantage than that of Sir Winston Churchill concludes on one mildly false assertion: ‘At the end, as at the beginning, she had no club.’ In fact, from 1978 until the end, she was the only female member of Buck’s Club (save for a period where she shared the distinction with the HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother). She was a regular visitor, for a time with Sir Denis, a member himself over many decades. As it happens, Sir Winston was also a member, from 1920, and subsequently patron, from 1953 to his death in 1965, and he remained a frequent visitor throughout his life.

Dyeing and dying A teacher in Harrow complained to his MP that he had been banned from marking pupils’ work in red ink in case it upset them. Some origins of ink: Black Made from burned bones, tar and pitch in India by the 4th century BC. Made from soot in China by the 3rd century BC. Red Blood was used in medieval England (red ink from blood is said to have been used by poor monasteries; hence its association with debt). Made with brazilwood from the 16th century in Europe. Blue Made from various vitreous pigments added to black ink in 11th-century Europe. Purple Made in ancient Tyre, in the 7th century BC, from a secretion of shellfish. Epidemic of fear Eight hundred people in the Swansea area contracted measles in a now rare epidemic of a once universal disease.