After she fell from power and entered a mindset of personal bitterness, Michael Alison tried to reach out to her on a spiritual level. His well-meaning seeds fell on stony ground. After listening to one of her many diatribes against her betrayers in the cabinet, he suggested that she should try to forgive them. He also offered to pray with her. ‘That’s not for me’, she replied.
Alison urged her to ‘find a good church’, suggesting that she would be warmly welcome at Holy Trinity Brompton in Knightsbridge, where he was the church warden. It was a proposal she considered, at least to the extent of reading some printed sermons by its vicar, The Revd Sandy Millar. As she approved of them she thought of going to his church one Sunday until she read in the newspapers that it was practising the Toronto Blessing, a form of Spirit-filled swooning in the aisles. ‘What exactly is this about Michael?’ she asked Alison, flourishing a picture of HTB worshippers prostrating themselves on the church floor. His explanations failed to convince her. ‘Denis couldn’t stand it’, she declared. ‘We like to reflect on religion privately. Not too much enthusiasm, y’know.’19
The phrase about enthusiasm may have come from the recesses of the Methodist memories of Margaret Roberts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the followers of John Wesley were dismissed as ‘enthusiasts’ by the established church. The pejorative code word survived into the twentieth century, usually in the context of one Methodist chapel looking down on the other on grounds of ‘too much enthusiasm’. Alfred Roberts would certainly have been familiar with the description. His daughter quietly dropped her Methodism a year or two after Oxford. Possibly under the influence of Denis, a wartime C of E who addressed every vicar as ‘padre’, she joined the Church Reticent wing of Anglicanism. There she uneasily remained despite many rumblings and grumblings about the qualities of its bishops.
The church where she worshipped most frequently was St Margaret’s, Westminster. Situated in the precincts of the Abbey, it is a favourite venue for politicians’ memorial services. These are run with heavy formality and emphasis on split-second timings for the entrances of dignitaries such as royal representatives, ambassadors, party leaders and, of course, the prime minister.
During her years in power, Margaret Thatcher regularly threw these meticulous schedules into disarray by arriving too early. The Rector, The Revd Canon Dr Donald Gray, politely raised the problem with No. 10. It made no difference. So, on one of the next occasions when she entered St Margaret’s at a premature 11.45 a.m. for a 12 noon memorial service, he dropped her a hint.
‘Good morning, Prime Minister. Early again, I see.’
‘Yes, Canon Gray, I like to be here in good time – to say my prayers’, was the icy response.
The Rector knew when he was beaten.20
For the first three years after she ceased being Prime Minister, the Thatchers were regular attendees at St Margaret’s, Westminster for the 11 a.m. Sunday service. But they were slightly uncomfortable with its sung Eucharist and Abbey liturgy. So they discreetly went ‘church shopping’. Their first port of call was St Michael’s, Chester Square, which had the advantage of being less than 200 yards from the front door of no. 73, the four-storey house they bought in 1991.
Brian Griffiths was a leading member of the congregation at St Michael’s whose vicar was Charles Marnham. He had founded the Alpha Course when a curate at Holy Trinity Brompton. With such a pedigree, his services were bound to be evangelical, although moderately so by HTB standards, but their repetitive guitar choruses were a step too far for Denis.
After some trial excursions to the Guards Chapel and the Chapel Royal, the Thatchers agreed that their preferred place of worship should be at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Its historic seventeeth-century chapel appealed to Margaret because of its traditional English Matins and Hymnody. She also liked to engage with which she called its ‘sound common sense preaching’.21
The Chaplain, The Revd Dick Whittington, recalled:
I could usually see Lady Thatcher leaning forward in her seat, listening to my sermons with extraordinary concentration. Often, she would like to have a conversation afterwards on some aspect of it. Almost always, she was highly perceptive and supportive. But once, when I had preached on Martha and Mary, emphasising how Mary had listened so carefully to Our Lord while her sister was doing the household chores, Lady Thatcher struck a critical note. ‘We mustn’t underestimate the value of the Marthas who knuckle down and get the work done’, she told me.22
The chaplain, a no-nonsense combat soldier before taking holy orders, gradually entered into a close pastoral relationship with the two most famous members of his congregation. When Denis died of pancreatic cancer in the nearby Lister Hospital in 2003, The Revd Dick Whittington was present at the moment of his death, leading Margaret Thatcher in prayer as she knelt at her husband’s bedside, holding his hand.
Denis departed in peace with a traditional funeral service, which included his favourite hymn, ‘Immortal Invisible’, and prayers he had chosen from the South African Prayer Book and the Book of Common Prayer.
On the day of the service Margaret was confused as well as distressed. She did not seem to know whose coffin the pallbearers were carrying in and out of the chapel. Yet, on both good and bad days she always felt at home in the Royal Hospital, continuing for the final years of her life to enjoy the company of its colourfully attired Chelsea Pensioners, and to be a regular attender at its chapel services. She was delighted when the governing body decided to name its new £27 million hospital facility as the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary.
A few yards outside the main entrance to the infirmary, still within the confines of the Royal Hospital, stands a tranquil lawn. The ashes of Denis were interred there in 2003. Ten years later Margaret’s last remains were laid to rest alongside him. Perhaps for the first time since she was ousted from power, she was at peace.
________________
* Spearfish was a highly sophisticated £1.2 billion torpedo system designed to destroy Russian submarines. Its cancellation caused the First Sea Lord to resign in protest. After this story hit the headlines Margaret Thatcher said to me: ‘Don’t worry about the brass hats. They always want their toys.’
Epilogue
DECLINE
There are many stories about Margaret Thatcher’s kindness to people in trouble. This one happened to involve me. It is historically interesting for a different reason: it marked the beginning of her downward spiral into ill health, memory loss and dementia that cast such a difficult cloud over the last years of her life.
In January 2000 I was released from prison after serving seven months of an eighteen-month sentence for perjury. Forty-eight hours after beginning to breathe the air of freedom my telephone rang. ‘Denis Thatcher here’, said the unexpected voice on the line. ‘Would you do me the honour of joining me for lunch at my club one day next week?’
For a moment I thought I was having my leg pulled by an impostor. But it was the real Denis. He gave me a superb four-hour lunch at the East India Club. The warmth of his hospitality and cheerfulness of his conversation performed wonders for my battered morale. As we tottered out into St James’s Square he said: ‘Margaret’s been concerned about you. She’d like to see you on the quiet sometime. I’ll be in touch.’
Before anything happened on this front, other members of the Thatcher family made contact. Mark, whom I did not know well, also took me out to lunch. Gauche in manner, he overflowed with generosity. He offered me financial support; an all-expenses paid holiday at his house in Constantia near Cape Town; and the loan of office space and a secretary. He came back to see me to repeat his urgings to accept this help.
As I was about to become a mature student at Oxford, Mark’s offers were not taken up but they were greatly appreciated. I was touched by his genuine compassion. I learned from this good experience of him that Mark Thatcher can be the kindest and most caring of friends to someone going through a difficult patch.
Also in the weeks after my
release I often saw Carol. In her different way she too was a rock of loving support and friendship.
As is her habit, Carol may well have been acting entirely independently of other members of her family. But instinctively I felt that Denis and Mark would not have approached me so warmly and so generously without the encouragement, perhaps even the orchestration, of Margaret.
A further indication of her kindness towards me came a few weeks later. She asked her former PPS, Michael Alison, to organise a supper party at his home in Chelsea, saying ‘I’d like to talk to Jonathan’. When it took place, in early June 2000, the gathering consisted only of Margaret and Denis Thatcher, Michael and Sylvia Mary Alison, General Sir Michael Rose (an Alison cousin) and myself.
It was a delightfully relaxed evening. Talking one-on-one Margaret wanted to know every detail about prison life, saying at one point: ‘I really should have done something to shake up this part of the criminal justice system. I listened too much to Willie and his stuff about what he called “the glasshouse’’.’
Around the table there was some interesting conversation about church life. Denis described himself as a ‘middle-stump Anglican’; and Michael Alison (a churchwarden) defended the stumps while Margaret bowled fast at them. She denounced the ‘general wetness’ of the Church of England, saying: ‘It’s so difficult to hear a good strong teaching sermon these days. I’d like to listen to a preacher tackling a challenging text like “the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” for twenty-five fiery minutes.’
‘You’d put the fear of God into any padre if he went on for more than ten minutes’, observed Denis.
Because Michael Rose had recently been in command of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia, his brains were well and truly picked about the latest developments in the Balkans. Margaret Thatcher was characteristically on top of the details of the genocides, war crimes, atrocities and refugee movements of the region. Her moral fervour was passionate. ‘How I wish you were still Prime Minister’, declared Sylvia Mary Alison.
‘I’d sort these problems out with whatever force was necessary and stop the evil’, replied the guest of honour.
Two days later Margaret and Carol had a rare mother and daughter lunch in the coffee shop of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, overlooking Hyde Park. I had described the Alisons’ dinner party in some detail to Carol, so one of her first questions to her mother was about General Sir Michael Rose. Carol recalled:
I fully expected her to give me lengthy chapter and verse on Bosnia and sat back waiting for a characteristic monologue. But she soon became confused and a few sentences later discussion of Bosnia had moved to the Falklands as she muddled up the Falklands and that of the Yugoslav wars. You could have knocked me down off my chair. Watching her struggle with her words and her memory I simply couldn’t believe it. She was in her seventy-fifth year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and one hundred per cent damage proof.1
Carol was so upset by those sudden signs of her mother’s memory loss that she questioned me closely about the Alison supper later that evening. It soon became evident that the situation was rather worse. For Margaret, who as Carol put it ‘always had a memory like a website’,2 had clearly been in a horrendous muddle about who had been present and what had been discussed. ‘Houston, we have a problem’, said Carol gloomily.3
The problem may have surfaced briefly in Hong Kong a few months earlier when Crawfie and Julian Seymour thought that Lady Thatcher had been temporarily confused at a reception. But on that occasion the seriousness of it had been missed. Now the difficulties needed a proper medical diagnosis.
This was not easy because the patient’s health fluctuated – sometimes for the better, but occasionally for the sharply worse. She had a serious stroke when on holiday in Madeira in 2001. She made a good recovery from it, but from then on she had to draw on all her reserves of determination and will-power to cover up the failings in her memory.
When she saw her doctors she put on a virtuoso performance of not only being on the ball but of hitting every medical question for six. But good diagnosticians are not easily fooled, even by formidable ex-prime ministers. It took years to happen, but slowly and inexorably the shutters of her mind were closing down.
Margaret Thatcher was never diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But there are at least forty-eight different types of dementia and related illnesses. She held them intermittently at bay for the next three years by a combination of personal strength and carefully balanced medication. But her inner circle knew the worst, for she grew increasingly forgetful, distressingly repetitious, unpredictably volatile, frail in body and unsteady on her feet.
The unsteadiness was caused by her insistence on wearing high-heeled shoes, not, as was sometimes rumoured, by too many whiskies. Although she drank more in retirement than in power she was usually a careful watcher of her intake. ‘How many units of alcohol is that dear?’ she asked me in 2007 when I was refilling her glass of claret over dinner in our home. This form of measurement (unheard of by Denis) had been introduced to her by an American doctor. She heeded his advice but not to the letter. At that same dinner party she was easily persuaded to have one last nightcap of champagne on the grounds that ‘it’s weaker than whisky they tell me’. Then as if to ease her units of alcohol conscience still further she added a few moments later, ‘Winston used to say that he was often the better for a glass of Pol Roger – but never the worse’.
Having Margaret Thatcher to dinner in her old age was rather like entertaining an antique lighthouse. At first you would not be entirely sure if the lights were working. But gradually the electricity began to flicker at recognition of old landmarks. My wife and I kept our dinners for Margaret to six or eight people, most of whom were familiar faces to her.
On one evening her first PPS, Sir Clive Bossom, by then in his nineties, had an amusing argument with her about whether they had travelled together by train or by no. 11 bus when going to inspect the kitchens at his father’s house, No. 5 Carlton Gardens, shortly before she and Denis held their wedding reception there in 1951.
At another dinner Sir Edward du Cann reminded her (not entirely to her satisfaction!) about the loyalty of the 1922 Committee to her at the time of the 1981 Budget. Amusing reminiscences of how the Thatcher family had cruised around the Mediterranean on the yacht Melita in 1975 were shared with Lady Brinckman, the daughter of Sir Robert Grant Ferris MP, who had owned and skippered it. Gloria, Countess Bathurst, brought out sparkles from the guest of honour as they both remembered hilarious details of a 1980s Conservative Party rally held at Cirencester Park, the Bathursts’ house in Gloucestershire.
Like many elderly people Lady Thatcher was better at ancient memories than current topics. Sometimes the lighthouse would fall dark for disconcerting periods. Then suddenly it would shine a beam that illuminated the whole table, as when she told Norman Lamont that entry to the ERM had been ‘a disastrous folly … thank goodness you got us out of it!’
At another moment she came to life with an anthem of praise for Sir Keith Joseph whom she described as ‘the most original intellect I ever met … he completely changed my mind on the moral issue of encouraging the free market’.
On a topical theme she congratulated Iain Duncan Smith for his pioneering work ‘fighting the good fight to reduce the dependency culture. We’ll never get Britain right until we do that’.
As these fragments from our dinner parties show, Margaret Thatcher’s conversation came in flashes of light out of a background of darkness. She knew what she wanted to say but had to struggle to make herself understood.
In her early eighties, she was often lonely and in need of company. She liked the buzz of going out in the evenings, as always beautifully dressed and coiffured. She had conversational defence mechanisms which sometimes resulted in non sequiturs. ‘Would you like some more gravy, Lady Thatcher?’ was met by the response, ‘I always say the most important thing in life is to make up your mind and then to stick to it’.
Jokes were usually not her forte but there was one she adored. It concerned a London taxi driver picking up a German tourist after a trip on the London Eye.
The visitor had been mightily impressed. He was loud in his compliments for the view, the engineering and the experience. ‘Vot a great vheel! Wunderbar!’ he kept saying.
The cabbie was in a mickey-taking mood.
‘Well, you’ve seen the wheel’, he quipped, ‘but wait till you’ve seen the ’amster.’
This Cockney humour left the German tourist totally baffled. But when Margaret Thatcher heard it she blew up with laughter. She enjoyed the East End wordplay on wheels and hamsters. Even more did she enjoy the Teutonic incomprehension. It became her favourite funny story which Julian Seymour had to repeat over and over again to her.
Although making the lighthouse laugh was a rare achievement, her enjoyment of a dinner with comfortable friends was pleasantly apparent. She ate and drank heartily. She always made a point of popping into the kitchen to thank the cook. Even when she dropped out of the conversation for a while she seemed relaxed in her private world.
At the end of one evening when I was escorting her out of our front door she became disconcertingly critical, saying: ‘Why does Jonathan give us Belgian chocolates? What’s wrong with English chocolates? Why doesn’t he have good old Terry’s English chocolates?’
I promised to do better next time but she thought I was someone else. ‘You won’t tell Jonathan I said that about the chocolates will you?’ was her parting murmur to me as her detectives helped her into the car.
It was easier to feel love and sympathy for Margaret Thatcher when she was vulnerable than when she was powerful. By the time she was eighty-five she only felt able to go out on the rarest of occasions, and even those exeats were sometimes due to other people’s manipulations. From 2010 onwards she lived in an increasingly circumscribed world of shrinking horizons and darkening twilight.
Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality Page 86