Thatcher: she stays too long and talks too much
June 25, 1980
LUNCH at the Beefsteak [London men-only club], Edward Ford [Extra Equerry to the Queen, and her former assistant private secretary] tells the story of Winston [Churchill] at Balmoral in the early 1950s. He was awaiting the result of a nuclear test on a new bomb, and said to the Queen: ‘By this time tomorrow, we shall know if it is a pop or a plop.’
February 26, 1981
MARTIN CHARTERIS [the Queen’s private secretary, later Provost of Eton] to lunch at Claridge’s. [He says] the Queen felt strongly about [former Labour Prime Minister] Harold Wilson’s resignation Honours List, but felt she could not remonstrate with him, much less turn it down.
Instead, Wilson was merely asked whether he really wanted to recommend so many more names than his predecessors had done; and whether they were the names which on reflection he would still wish to put forward. To both questions he replied yes, and there the Queen felt that her right to interfere had ended.
June 5, 1981
[FORMER Conservative Prime Minister] Ted Heath tells me of one of his visits to Windsor just after [businessman] Arnold Weinstock had won the 200th running of the Derby, so beating the Queen’s horse.
Ted said to the Queen and Prince Philip: ‘Of course, if it had been a sailing race, we should all have hung back so that the Queen could have won it.’
Prince Philip retorted: ‘Like hell you would!’
September 20, 1983
[FORMER Labour PM] Jim Callaghan shares my delight in the personality of the Queen Mother. At a lunch given by the Queen for heads of Common Market countries, she observed to Jim in a loud voice: ‘I am glad we are in the Common Market. You see, they have so much to learn from us.’
December 6, 1983
LUNCH with [former PM] Harold Macmillan. On the Queen, he takes an affectionate but detachedly Whig view. ‘I tried to interest her in politics, but she is only interested in the personalities of politics. I still see her sometimes. She is lonely and apprehensive about the future.’
September 18, 1985
JEAN TRUMPINGTON to dine. She relates how when she went to take her leave of the Queen as a Baroness-in-Waiting on being promoted to be Under-Secretary in the Department of Health and Social Security, the Queen said of the PM [Mrs Thatcher]: ‘She stays too long and talks too much. She has lived too long among men.’
May 13, 1989
LUNCH with the Queen Mother. She expresses strong admiration for Mrs Thatcher’s determination to concede no sovereignty to the EEC.
June 1, 1997
TO HEADINGTON for tea with [philosopher] Isaiah Berlin. We talk of relations between the Queen and her Prime Ministers.
The Queen is careful never to reveal what she thinks of each, although it is generally known that she and Margaret Thatcher had sharp disagreements on the importance of the Commonwealth. Isaiah now has an important piece of evidence.
Both the Queen and Thatcher came to a gala at Covent Garden, but sat in different parts of the house. In the interval, the Queen let it be known that she did not want to meet Mrs Thatcher — who was sent to an upper room for drinks, as was Isaiah. Thatcher then said she would like to say goodbye to the Queen, a request that was ignored.
April 1,1998
THE Queen evidently has much longer audiences with Blair than those in the Thatcher and Major years.