Why does the V&A think Margaret Thatcher is a villain equivalent to Hitler?

Areader contacted me this week after a recent visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was walking through a special exhibition on British humour when he stumbled upon a caption next to some Punch and Judy puppets.

It read: “Over the years, the evil character in this seaside puppet show has shifted from the Devil to unpopular public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama bin Laden, to offer contemporary villains.”

As the reader pointed out: “I believe that this bracketing of Margaret Thatcher with a genocidal maniac and the worst terrorist of the 21st century to be deeply offensive and repugnant and I am sure most people would agree. It is completely unacceptable in a taxpayer funded institution.”

I couldn’t agree more.

But of course the V&A has form when it comes to Mrs Thatcher. Remember when the museum was accused of refusing to exhibit items from the wardrobe of the first female British prime minister in 2015?

Despite boasting one of the largest fashion collections in the world, it was reported to have “politely declined the offer of Mrs Thatcher’s clothes, feeling that these records of Britain’s political history were best suited to another collection which would focus on their intrinsic social historical value.” Many of the items were later sold at auction, although the museum subsequently said that no formal offer had been made.

In 2016, the V&A did put on an exhibition of some of the former prime minister’s clothes, which had been donated by her children Mark and Carol Thatcher. At the time, Claire Wilcox, the V&A’s senior curator of fashion, said the gift constituted “a record of the working wardrobe of one of the most influential and powerful women of the 20th century.”

How odd then, that the very same museum should now seek to denigrate the Iron Lady in such an appalling fashion.

The V&A has form – refusing in 2015 to exhibit items from the wardrobe of Mrs Thatcher