Margaret Thatcher

Comments about Margaret Thatcher

She was a tigress surrounded by hamsters.
John Biffen, politician, 'The revenge of the unburied dead', The Observer (9 December, 1990)

The Prime Ministers who are remembered are those who think and teach, and not many do. Mrs Thatcher ... influenced the thinking of a generation.
Tony Benn, as quoted in The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945 (2001) by Peter Hennessy

Her strong points were her iron will. I've never known a will like it in politics and I've known a few politicians in my time in various countries. I've never known a man or woman faintly like her, she was as tough as they come, and anything that required guts and will she could do for you. Anything that required sensitivity, she couldn't, she had none.
Brian Walden on speaking on BBC Westminster Hour

Margaret Thatcher is the greatest living Englishwoman.
Charles Moore, Mrs. Thatcher's authorised biographer, in 'The mellowing of Margaret Thatcher', The Daily Telegraph (12 October, 2005)

Margaret Thatcher always gave me headaches.
Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor, from his memoirs 1982-1990, cited in "Kohl lambasts
'ice-cold' Thatcher", BBC News (3 November 2005).

What does she want, this housewife? My balls on a tray?
Jacques Chirac, then Prime minister of France, during the February 1988 Brussels summit; appeared in headlines of the British press and created a minor diplomatic incident.

She behaves with all the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa constrictor.
Tony Banks MP (The Independent, October 1997)

For us she is not the iron lady. She is the kind, dear Mrs. Thatcher.
Alexander Dubček, Czechoslovakian leader, (Independent on Sunday Dec. 30, 1990)

Don't think of her as a politician. Think of her as a one-woman revolution - a hurricane in human form.
Andrew Marr, BBC correspondent

Car aucune femme sur la planète
N's'ra jamais plus con que son frère
Ni plus fière ni plus malhonnête
À part, peut-être, Madame Thatcher

Translation
For no woman on the planet
shall ever be more of a prick than her brother
or more vain, or more dishonest
except for, perhaps, Mrs Thatcher

Miss Maggie, a song about Thatcher by Renaud Séchan



Thatcher
OCR A2 coursework option: Britain under Margaret Thatcher 1979-90 (F965)
Many will note that much in this unit guide has elevance to
OCR: F961 Option B: Postwar Britain, 1951-94 and Foreign and Imperial Policy, 1945-90.
Edexcel: Unit 2, Option E1: British political history 1945-90: consensus and conflict.
AQA: HIS3M: The making of modern Britain, 1951-2007

This unit guide was written by  Dr Graham Goodlad and Tom Wells
© Sempringham publishing 2009

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