Proposed MCC membership for Mugabe and Thatcher’s birthday party plans among stories kept under wraps – until now
John Major vetoed a Foreign Office idea to offer honorary membership of the MCC to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, saying it was a “dodgy precedent”, records released by the National Archives reveal. The FCO proposed the offer for Mugabe’s 1994 state visit to the UK, stating he was “reportedly keen on cricket”.
Continue reading...The then British PM told her Irish counterpart that the bureaucracy in Brussels was a ‘politburo’ and was tying the UK up in regulations, papers show
Margaret Thatcher branded the European commission’s plans for a single currency as a “rush of blood to the head”, according to 30-year-old documents released from the Irish government archives.
In an echo of the divisive political debate that ultimately led to Brexit, the then British prime minister hit out at the “politburo” in Brussels and vowed not to be dictated to, during talks with her then Irish counterpart.
Continue reading...Previous prime ministers have defined their leadership via a row with Europe – will Johnson be different?
Since the formation of the European Union, it has been a habit for British prime ministers to try to define their premiership via a row with the rest of the bloc, especially given the laudatory domestic newspaper headlines such disputes engender.
The leading exponent was Margaret Thatcher, ironically in many ways the architect of the single market from which Boris Johnson is struggling to organise the UK’s retreat.
Continue reading...Season 4’s wardrobe includes Diana’s Cinderella dress and Thatcher’s power shoulders
With its power bouffants, sweetie-wrapper party dresses and alarming shoulder pads, some call the 1980s the time that fashion forgot. But in the fourth season of The Crown, which starts on TV tomorrow night, the era’s extraordinary clothing plays a pivotal role in bringing the decade’s stories back to vivid life. Some looks were faithfully recreated, while others were more loosely inspired by the actual wardrobes of the royal family, as the show’s costume designer, Amy Roberts, explains below.
Continue reading...The best series so far of the royal drama, with the family sliding into dysfunction and new characters providing 80s shoulder-padded spectacle
The Crown (Netflix) has finally reached the blockbuster era, thanks to the pincer-like introduction of Diana (soon to be Princess) and Margaret (Thatcher), at long last, who both elevate the season to its best form yet. It begins in 1979, with the election of Britain’s first female prime minister, and ends in 1990, amid the furious flames that were beginning to consume the marriage of the heir to the throne. It is grand, gorgeous and as soapy as ever, perfect for a wintery period of hunkering down.
I have not always been convinced by The Crown. In the past, it has been prone to sentimentality, and never knowingly using one word to hint at a situation when several thousand will do. The sumptuous look of it all and the delicious performances have frequently been called upon to come to the rescue of the writing, which is sometimes clumsy, over-explaining subtext, not trusting its own subtlety, eventually spelling any emotional conclusions out all in bold capital letters.
Continue reading...Papers show Telegraph article was in briefing pack before historic speech on Europe
Margaret Thatcher’s infamous “No, no, no” retort to Jacques Delors, a historic moment in the UK’s relationship with Europe, which also had the effect of precipitating her downfall, was partly inspired by an article penned by a young journalist named Boris Johnson, her newly released private papers show.
In 1990, 30 years before Johnson took the UK out of the European Union, an article he penned as the Telegraph’s EC (European Community) correspondent warning of the threat the EC posed to national sovereignty was in Thatcher’s briefing pack as she delivered the combative speech to parliament.
Continue reading...Former president says ancient pottery should have remained in Downing Street collection
When Cyprus’s former president George Vassiliou made the official gift of an ancient vase to Margaret Thatcher in 1988, he assumed it would remain at 10 Downing Street.
Instead, more than three decades later, the sale at auction of the 2,700-year-old pottery has provoked diplomatic discomfort in London and disquiet in Nicosia.
Continue reading...While he was under house arrest in Surrey in 1999, the former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet received a fine malt from an old friend.
Related: 'Where are they?': families search for Chile’s disappeared prisoners
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