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“... of it in the interwar period (as we can indeed in the 1880s or the 1760s), it was forged more by Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch than it was by Lloyd George and Sir John Reith. In this world – our world – ‘class’ has become a dirty word, one not even Labour politicians can speak without being labelled sectarians or romantics. So let me be ...”

“... figures. (Imagine being puzzled that there were very different assessments of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher or the presidency of Ronald Reagan.) They have also been more confident than most that some kind of accurate calibration of monstrosity v. political virtue is attainable. Hence there has been a long series of worthy studies reaching the ...”

“... land of UK independence. In 1975 the future standard-bearer of Bruges speech Euroscepticism, Margaret Thatcher, had been the photogenic new leader of a largely Europhile Conservative Party, and the proud owner of a hideous woolly jumper displaying the flags of the EEC nations. Back in the mid-1970s the tycoon James Goldsmith, the future founder of ...”

“... for the old and the infirm, that is called into question. By the time of Sheep’s Clothing, with Margaret Thatcher in power, not much has changed except that scamming is harder work in a world less easily beguiled (‘There’s nothing I need that I can’t get for myself,’ one intended dupe retorts). The title refers to the pretence of ‘cradle to ...”

“... may beg to differ. The early recordings are painfully stagey. The first, from 1951, features Margaret Lockwood (best known for playing feisty period heroines opposite James Mason, who himself did Desert Island Discs in 1961 and 1981) sounding as if she’s narrating a public information film: the Eton boating song ‘conjures up for me a very pleasant ...”

“... cut-the-welfare-bills ‘Labour’ Government whose leader is said to be a serious admirer of Margaret Thatcher? (‘Third Way’? It’s just the sensible, well-tried electoral trick of stealing your opponent’s clothes.) Stephen has recently seen John Redwood, who has so far recovered from post-electoral stress disorder as to be predicting that ...”

“... There are​ people who like the idea of living in a hotel, but nobody wants to die in one. Margaret Thatcher checked in to the Ritz in December 2012, a couple of weeks after she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. ‘She loved the Ritz,’ her private secretary recalled. ‘She was looked after by beautifully dressed young men: the world wasn’t bothering her anymore ...”

“... Denis Thatcher is entirely inventable – as John Wells understood: he comes in a flat pack with easy-to-follow instructions, all the components familiar general shapes, all parts from stock, no odd angles, no imagination required. When they came up with the idea for Ikea, they used Denis Thatcher as the prototype ...”

“... was publicly exposed in 1979, during which year the Queen revoked his knighthood and he voted for Margaret Thatcher. Blunt is the enigmatist’s enigma. The English imagination has responded strongly to this compounding of spycraft, scholarship, homosexual intrigue and royal scandal. Blunt’s 1979 exposure and his death in 1983 occasioned books, plays ...”

“... had ‘next to no impact’. Grammar, as well as decency, caused arguments. Lord Hailsham wrote to Margaret Thatcher: ‘I am convinced there must be some limit to vulgarity! Could they not use the literate “sexual intercourse”? If that is thought to be too narrow, then why not “sexual relations” or “physical practices”, but not ...”

“... be defended, and returned to their homes, frustrated but resigned. Some Western leaders, not least Margaret Thatcher, were hoping in vain for such a demonstration of Soviet firmness. So why did Gorbachev and his colleagues choose to stay on the sidelines? Why did they not even play the ‘German card’, as some of their close advisers urged, to woo West ...”

“... couple of years ago. His favourite food as a teenager (McDonald’s), his role models (Bill Gates, Margaret Thatcher), his jargon (Key Performance Indicators), the entertainers he picked for private parties (Pitbull and PSY), his choice of intimidation techniques (an envelope with a bullet in it), the video games he liked (Age of Empires and Call of ...”

“... And the Widow is still in charge. Who could have guessed, when Downriver went to press, that Margaret Thatcher would have resigned by publication date? Not Sinclair. When he appears in the third person in the final story, he babbles ‘some bravado sub-text about considering his book a failure if the Widow clung on to power one year after its ...”

“... condition of her sex. As for parallels recently drawn between Elizabeth’s character and that of Margaret Thatcher, they have rarely been flattering to either. Dobson and Watson tell this story adroitly, interweaving it with that different but concurrent phenomenon: Elizabeth fictionalised as a love-lorn and unhappy woman compelled to sacrifice her ...”

“... salon and theatre’. Not many former Tory leaders can produce chunks of sociology like that. Margaret Thatcher might have found it politically unsound. There are ideological reasons why Major’s music-hall background is less improbable than it seems. It was, after all, a deeply conservative institution. As he puts it, it was ...”