Mid-life crisis that almost broke up the Thatchers' marriage: A unique insight into their dysfunctional family life - by the man who dated Carol
By Jonathan Aitken|
Romance: Jonathan Aitken dated Carol Thatcher for more than three years
The Thatchers needed to be happy, relaxed and loving, the perfect family.
This was the day when crucial publicity photographs were being shot, intended to woo and win over the nation.
In advance of the election to oust Jim Callaghan’s Labour Government in 1979 and install Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, wife, husband and twins assembled at their retreat in the Kent countryside for pictures to be taken of the Leader of the Opposition en famille.
It was a tall order, because that morning all four Thatchers were in a vile temper.
Denis was irate because he had been ordered to cancel his Sunday game of golf. Margaret was furious because Denis had spontaneously invited a female guest to a private lunch at which she had wanted to discuss election tactics with her key media advisers.
As for 25-year-old Mark and Carol, they were having a quarrel of their own which put both of them in bolshie moods.
All in all, then, it was a not untypical day in the dysfunctional Thatcher household.
In conversations with friends during her retirement years, Margaret Thatcher lamented that she had not devoted more of her time and energy to the upbringing of her children.
‘If I had my time again, I wouldn’t go into politics because of what it does to your family,’ she told one old friend.
Smile! The Thatchers en famille for a 'happy' pre-election publicity shot in 1979
Margaret Thatcher was always driven by ambition. She put country before family: that was the way she was made.
The public should not complain about it, particularly since Denis, Mark and Carol have never openly done so.
Although her shortcomings as a matriarchal figure were real and sometimes painful, she was far too intelligent not to have chosen her priorities with some deliberation.
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WHY SHE DIDN'T SEE THE JOKE IN 'EVERY PM NEEDS A WILLIE'
A sense of humour was not one of Margaret Thatcher’s strengths.
When jokes were told around her, she usually remained po-faced because she simply failed to understand them.
When her speech-writers came up with funny lines and quips for her to say, they had to be explained and rehearsed in laborious detail.
Her literalism meant she very nearly vetoed the famous, campaign-winning Saatchi poster declaring ‘Labour isn’t working’ over a dole queue tailing off into the distance. She missed the point.
Saatchi’s Tim Bell patiently explained to her that it was a double entendre — that neither the Labour Government nor the unemployed were working.
Eventually she got it and gave the go-ahead.
But double meanings, particularly sexual ones, inevitably passed her by — hence her famous ‘Every Prime Minister should have a Willie’ tribute to Willie Whitelaw.
It was not the only example. When she was Education Secretary, she was standing behind the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons with a group of Tory MPs, when they were joined by her PPS, Fergus Montgomery.
An elegant but somewhat effete figure, he had just had his election photographs taken and was looking so well groomed that she complimented him.
‘You do look smart today, Fergus.’ Preening himself, he replied: ‘Well, I’ve just been to the hairdresser.’
With a straight face, Margaret responded: ‘I expect you’ve had a blow job.’
The laughter was so loud that the Speaker turned round in his chair, but Margaret had no idea what she had said to cause such mirth.
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When jokes were told around her, she usually remained po-faced because she simply failed to understand them.
When her speech-writers came up with funny lines and quips for her to say, they had to be explained and rehearsed in laborious detail.
Her literalism meant she very nearly vetoed the famous, campaign-winning Saatchi poster declaring ‘Labour isn’t working’ over a dole queue tailing off into the distance. She missed the point.
Saatchi’s Tim Bell patiently explained to her that it was a double entendre — that neither the Labour Government nor the unemployed were working.
Eventually she got it and gave the go-ahead.
But double meanings, particularly sexual ones, inevitably passed her by — hence her famous ‘Every Prime Minister should have a Willie’ tribute to Willie Whitelaw.
It was not the only example. When she was Education Secretary, she was standing behind the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons with a group of Tory MPs, when they were joined by her PPS, Fergus Montgomery.
An elegant but somewhat effete figure, he had just had his election photographs taken and was looking so well groomed that she complimented him.
‘You do look smart today, Fergus.’ Preening himself, he replied: ‘Well, I’ve just been to the hairdresser.’
With a straight face, Margaret responded: ‘I expect you’ve had a blow job.’
The laughter was so loud that the Speaker turned round in his chair, but Margaret had no idea what she had said to cause such mirth.
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In a newspaper interview, she explained the compatibility of her daily routine with motherhood and marriage. ‘However busy I am, I always manage to phone the twins shortly before 6pm,’ she said.
It was a pretence. In reality, the children felt the full weight of her workload. She was often an absent mother, and even when she was with them at home, she could be so completely obsessed by her job that she cut herself off from the family life going on around her.
Carol recalls Top Of The Pops blaring loudly from the TV one night and turning to her mother, who was sitting on the sofa beside her, to ask if she wanted it turned down. No reply. Carol repeated the question.
‘Pardon, dear?’ a surprised Margaret eventually responded. ‘The TV? Oh, I didn’t realise it was on.’ As ever, she was in her own world.
Carol was later to write: ‘My mother’s single-mindedness eclipsed our family and social life.’
In that same newspaper interview, Margaret talked about Denis, pointing out that ‘my husband is every bit as busy as I am, if not more so. It is rare for him to be at home for more than one evening a week.’
This was true. Denis, with his family business to run and frequent trips overseas, was not standing in for her at home on those evenings she was in the House of Commons.
But it was not quite the whole truth. His wife’s obsession with her duties was becoming more than he had bargained for. After leaving his office, instead of going home, he stayed in the pub until closing time.
He also spent more and more evenings with his mother and sister, Joy, who lived together in Notting Hill Gate.
It was a sadness of Denis’s life that his wife never got on well with his mother — an example of Margaret’s unattractive tendency to bear grudges after some earlier unexplained contretemps between the two Thatcher women.
'My mother's single-mindedness eclipsed our
family and social life': Carol Thatcher, left, felt the full weight of
her mother's workload
A further erosion of harmony in the marriage was caused by Margaret’s enthusiasm for accepting weekend speaking engagements all over the country.
Promoted to her first government post, as a junior minister in the Ministry of Pensions, her over- keenness to be away on official engagements had an unfortunate impact at home.
Rather than come back to an empty house or to a wife overwhelmed with ministerial papers, Denis gradually found that he preferred to go sailing, on a yacht named Winnie, with his rugby-club friends.
With both their parents often absent, the upbringing of the twins was far from ideal.
Dysfunctional: The former Prime Minister is
pictured with husband Denis and children Mark and Carol as she leaves
for London's Heathrow airport for a visit to China, Japan and Hong Kong
Somehow, the family stuck together, although a lot of the glue had to be provided by outsiders, particularly by a hardworking nanny called Abby.
In 1964, however, Denis nearly came unstuck when he went through a particularly bad patch of business worries. He had a form of nervous breakdown.
His doctor told him he was going to be ill unless he eased his workload and slowed down.
‘I got myself on a boat and took myself off to South Africa,’ he later recalled. ‘It shook Margaret.'
His sudden sabbatical may well have shaken his wife, but it avoided the breakdown of his health and the break-up of their marriage.
Ambitious: During Mrs Thatcher's early days as
an MP, while her public life advanced by leaps and bounds, her family
relationships deteriorated
close did he come to these disasters?
According to an old friend with whom he discussed things, ‘he had a wife who was totally absorbed in her political career and he was terribly depressed’.
Denis needed to sort himself out. On the long sea voyage to South Africa, he relaxed for the first time in ages and took stock of how to resolve the problems that had grown into his mid-life crisis.
For her part, Margaret steered her way with outward calm through what was clearly a rough passage in her private life, although she must have had inner worries about Denis and their future together.
She had her own career wobbles, too, at this time. When Labour narrowly won the 1964 General Election, she held her seat but lost her ministerial post and perks — and Denis, still away in South Africa, was not there for her to turn to.
She also endured unexpected health problems of her own. A chest infection turned into a severe bout of pneumonia, and she was too ill to rise from her sick bed to attend the lying-in-state at Westminster Hall of her hero, Sir Winston Churchill.
She was miserable, possibly even depressed, at a low ebb emotionally, politically and physically.
The combination of loss of office, an absent husband and sickness made 1965 her very own winter of discontent — the lowest moment in her life (until she was ousted from 10 Downing Street a quarter of a century later, that is).
But all this passed. She recovered her health. Denis recovered his equilibrium.
The decision he took while in South Africa was to sell Atlas, the family’s paint and preservatives business, to Castrol Oil.
The deal put the equivalent of more than £1 million into his bank account, while he continued to run the company on a good salary and pension.
The pressure was off him, the financial stability of the Thatcher family assured.
The marriage regained strength — and Margaret carried on just as before, relentlessly pursuing her career track as she progressed from Education Secretary to Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister while her family carried on as best they could.
Perhaps what was happening left scars on Mark, Carol and Denis, but at the time they took it as a fait accompli.
'It is rare for him to be at home for more than one evening a week': Margaret claimed Denis was 'every bit as busy' as she was
Collectively, they kept their heads down and got on with their somewhat dysfunctional lives.
In the summer of 1976, I began dating Carol Thatcher.
Our relationship was serious and lasted more than three years. It was not greeted with unqualified enthusiasm by the now Leader of the Opposition, aka ‘Mum’.
She advised her 22-year-old daughter to be careful of an involvement with a 33-year-old bachelor MP.
Romancing the boss’s daughter was always likely to be a risky journey, but young love is oblivious to risk.
Carol and I pressed on regardless, and after a few months there was a thaw in the temperature and I was invited to Sunday lunch at Scotney Castle, a National Trust property in Kent where they had a flat for weekends.
My welcome was mixed. Denis was characteristically genial, asking knowledgeable questions about ‘my patch’, his phrase for my Thanet East constituency. By contrast, Mark was in a sulk, so made no conversation at all. Carol was furious with him.
Sportsman: On the day of the crucial publicity
shots, Denis was irate because he had been ordered to cancel his Sunday
game of golf
Ignoring these sibling tensions, Margaret wanted to talk shop about the Middle East, which she had just visited.
Above the mantelpiece was an elaborately jewelled insignia in Islamic calligraphy which the Syrian ambassador had presented to her, and she asked me to translate it.
‘It says,’ I told her: ‘“There is only one God and his name is Allah.” ’
‘Oh my goodness!’ said Margaret, looking flustered, unaware that she had been exhibiting the first teaching of the Koran on her wall.
‘Just as well we didn’t ask the padre to lunch,’ joked Denis.
Proud: Mrs Thatcher makes a brief appearance at the door of her London home in 1979
My perception of life chez Thatcher was that it was never dull, but never relaxed.
Denis and Carol were warm and endearing characters. Neither adjective seemed appropriate for Margaret, yet she was attractive because of her looks and her energy.
She was an excellent if mono-maniac hostess, insisting on doing all the wine-pouring, cooking and washing-up herself, interspersed with imperious commands of ‘Watch out!’, ‘Move your elbows, dear!’, ‘Look sharp!’, ‘Out of the way!’ and ‘Drink up!’
Her specialities were Sunday roasts and coronation chicken. She bustled around the kitchen at high speed, like a television chef on fast forward.
With the same acceleration, she cooked breakfast every morning for Denis, who could get pernickety if his bacon was not grilled in a certain way.
Superwoman ran her home super-efficiently. She bossed her family around a great deal, but none of them seemed particularly responsive to her commands.
Denis withdrew behind the sports pages of the paper. Carol withdrew from the line of fire of too much maternal criticism. Mark wanted too much maternal attention.
Dysfunctionality ruled. Everything in their lives was subordinated to the challenges of being Leader of the Opposition. Margaret was permanently as taut as a piano wire. She seemed admirable, but abnormal.
As an occasional insider to Thatcher family life, I sometimes saw unexpected sides to the outwardly tough matriarch.
Three worth mentioning were glimpses of her frugality, vulnerability and maternal affection.
The frugality appeared on an evening when I bought four tickets for a performance at the National Theatre of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit.
She had somehow assumed that I had been able to get these tickets as free house seats for Denis and herself, because my sister, Maria Aitken, was in the cast playing the lead role of Elvira.
When Carol corrected this impression during the evening, Margaret declared: ‘I insist on going halves with you.’
Superwoman: The businesswoman ran her home
super-efficiently. She bossed her family around a great deal, but none
of them seemed particularly responsive to her commands
I brushed this offer aside, and despite her not-so-mild protests I refused to tell her what the cost of the tickets had been.
She was not so easily thwarted. The next day, in my pigeonhole at the Members’ Lobby, she sent me a blank cheque signed ‘Margaret H Thatcher’.
She became cross with me after discovering from her bank statement that I never filled it in or cashed it.
The vulnerability was well hidden, but it was there.
One night, after an 11.30pm vote in the House, I dropped Carol home at Flood Street. Margaret was on her own in the sitting room reading some papers. I put my head round the door to say goodnight and saw that she was red-eyed, visibly upset.
I asked what was the matter. ‘Nothing, really,’ she sniffed. ‘One of our colleagues was unbelievably unpleasant to me in the division lobby... said I was wrecking the party... ’
This seemed such an unlikely cause of tears that I treated it rather insouciantly. ‘He was probably p***ed,’ I said. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’
Hostess: She was an excellent if mono-maniac
hostess, insisting on doing all the wine-pouring, cooking and washing-up
herself, interspersed with imperious commands of 'Watch out!', 'Move
your elbows, dear!', 'Look sharp!', 'Out of the way!' and 'Drink up!'
‘I hurt too, you know,’ she said, getting up and leaving the room. It was the first sign to me that the Iron Lady had a soft centre.
As for maternal affection, I had observed early on in my relationship with Carol that the usual outward signs of mother-daughter tenderness were rare.
However, there was an inner bond of some strength, as the following story of a skiing weekend illustrated.
In the winter of 1978, Carol was given a ten-day holiday in the Swiss resort of Verbier by her parents. I planned to go and join her there for a long weekend in the middle of it.
Because of problems with airline seat availability, my travel plans only worked if I flew back to London on a Monday evening flight from Geneva.
Strong: After Deni's decision to sell Atlas, the
family's paint and preservatives business, his and Margaret's marriage
regained strength
Unfortunately, after the tickets had been bought, this particular Monday turned out to be a date unexpectedly chosen by the Opposition for some contentious parliamentary voting.
It required all Conservative MPs to be present in the House on a running three-line whip from 3.30pm onwards.
My weekend with Carol in Verbier would have to be cancelled, to our great disappointment.
Although I accepted this, Carol in Verbier did not. Unknown to me, she telephoned her mother with a wail of protest about the unfairness of the situation and its wrecking effects on our romantic weekend.
Margaret’s heart evidently melted. A cheerful Carol came on the line with the announcement: ‘Mum says she can change the voting for Monday.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I replied. I was wrong. For at the last minute the Opposition day business was switched and the three-line whip was miraculously dropped. Carol and I had a wonderful weekend together in the joys of the Alps.
The day after my return, I saw Margaret at the Commons and went over and started to say thank you for her amazing favour. ‘Sshh!’ she said, putting a finger to her lips and giving me a theatrical wink. ‘Did you two have fun?’
‘Great fun,’ I replied. ‘Come and tell me about it, then,’ she said.
Five minutes later, I was sitting in an armchair drinking Scotch in her office. Kicking off her shoes, she brushed aside my thanks but wanted to know everything about Verbier.
‘I get so worried about Carol being out there all on her own,’ she explained.
Even more poignantly, just as I was leaving, she said: ‘You won’t tell Carol that I was worrying about her, will you? She will think I am being overbearing.’
The relationship between Mark and his mother was over-indulgent.
Margaret was constantly fussing about her son’s health, his failure to pass his accountancy exams and his perilous finances. She paid off his overdraft at least twice in the mid-1970s.
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SHE FORGAVE ME FOR BREAKING HER DAUGHTER CAROL'S HEART
Carol was one of the great loves of my life, but I handled it badly.
Soon after Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, my romance with her daughter ended.
‘You have brought great personal distress to the Queen’s First Minister,’ Ian Gow, her Parliamentary Private Secretary, informed me.
I understood his message, which was also conveyed in leaks to journalists. Although this was painful, I thought it was reasonable that I should be sent to Siberia.
What mother does not feel angry if she thinks her daughter’s happiness has been destroyed by a young man? Margaret Thatcher’s human instincts were entirely understandable.
But Siberia proved not to be the outer darkness. I continued to stay in touch with her vicariously through mutual friends.
Thirteen years later, not long after she left office, I went to see her. I was a defence minister in John Major’s Government and I wanted to pick her brains about the Soviet Union.
At the end of our talk, I said I would like to mention something rather personal. Taking a deep breath, I apologised to her. ‘I handled the break-up with Carol terribly badly,’ I confessed. ‘I know I made such a mess of things that I upset you, too, as her mother. So I just wanted you to know that I am very sorry for that.’
Thatcher looked totally stunned. There was an awkward silence in which she seemed to be choking up. Knowing how difficult she found any kind of personal or family matters, I took my leave quickly, wondering whether I had made a mistake in reopening a painful memory.
However, a week or two later, Denis came over to me at a party and shook hands: ‘Thank you for what you said to Margaret. She appreciated it a lot and so did I.’
From that moment on, my communications with her got better and better. I was a regular guest at her drinks and dinner parties, and she came to some of mine.
I had always known how much she appreciated loyalty in people. Anyone who gave it to her received it back abundantly, particularly if they were going through a bad patch — as I was to discover in January 2000 when I was released from prison after serving seven months of an 18-month sentence for perjury.
Forty-eight hours after beginning to breathe the air of freedom, my telephone rang.
‘Denis Thatcher here,’ said the unexpected voice on the line. ‘Would you do me the honour of joining me for lunch at my club one day next week?’
For a moment I thought I was having my leg pulled by an impostor. But it was the real Denis. He gave me a superb four-hour lunch at the East India Club.
The warmth of his hospitality and cheerfulness of his conversation performed wonders for my battered morale.
As we tottered out, he said: ‘Margaret’s been concerned about you. She’d like to see you on the quiet sometime. I’ll be in touch.’
A supper party was arranged, a delightfully relaxed evening in which she wanted to know every detail about prison life, saying at one point: ‘I really should have done something to shake up this part of the criminal justice system.’
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Soon after Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, my romance with her daughter ended.
‘You have brought great personal distress to the Queen’s First Minister,’ Ian Gow, her Parliamentary Private Secretary, informed me.
I understood his message, which was also conveyed in leaks to journalists. Although this was painful, I thought it was reasonable that I should be sent to Siberia.
What mother does not feel angry if she thinks her daughter’s happiness has been destroyed by a young man? Margaret Thatcher’s human instincts were entirely understandable.
But Siberia proved not to be the outer darkness. I continued to stay in touch with her vicariously through mutual friends.
Thirteen years later, not long after she left office, I went to see her. I was a defence minister in John Major’s Government and I wanted to pick her brains about the Soviet Union.
Love with the boss's daughter: Aitken and Carol
At the end of our talk, I said I would like to mention something rather personal. Taking a deep breath, I apologised to her. ‘I handled the break-up with Carol terribly badly,’ I confessed. ‘I know I made such a mess of things that I upset you, too, as her mother. So I just wanted you to know that I am very sorry for that.’
Thatcher looked totally stunned. There was an awkward silence in which she seemed to be choking up. Knowing how difficult she found any kind of personal or family matters, I took my leave quickly, wondering whether I had made a mistake in reopening a painful memory.
However, a week or two later, Denis came over to me at a party and shook hands: ‘Thank you for what you said to Margaret. She appreciated it a lot and so did I.’
From that moment on, my communications with her got better and better. I was a regular guest at her drinks and dinner parties, and she came to some of mine.
I had always known how much she appreciated loyalty in people. Anyone who gave it to her received it back abundantly, particularly if they were going through a bad patch — as I was to discover in January 2000 when I was released from prison after serving seven months of an 18-month sentence for perjury.
Forty-eight hours after beginning to breathe the air of freedom, my telephone rang.
‘Denis Thatcher here,’ said the unexpected voice on the line. ‘Would you do me the honour of joining me for lunch at my club one day next week?’
For a moment I thought I was having my leg pulled by an impostor. But it was the real Denis. He gave me a superb four-hour lunch at the East India Club.
The warmth of his hospitality and cheerfulness of his conversation performed wonders for my battered morale.
As we tottered out, he said: ‘Margaret’s been concerned about you. She’d like to see you on the quiet sometime. I’ll be in touch.’
A supper party was arranged, a delightfully relaxed evening in which she wanted to know every detail about prison life, saying at one point: ‘I really should have done something to shake up this part of the criminal justice system.’
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She worried about his personal safety when driving motor-cars long before the 1982 episode of him getting temporarily lost in the Sahara on a rally.
In 1979, she became tearful when, late at night, Mark had not returned from a day on the test-driving track of the Williams Formula One team.
Margaret was beside herself, getting me to call my friend Frank Williams to make sure that Mark had not been injured.
For all such concerns, good communications within the family deteriorated in quantity and quality once she advanced to Leader of the Opposition.
She was such a totally absorbed public figure that there was no time for private relaxation or close friendships.
She showed no personal intimacy or even warmth to any of her political colleagues.
The inner circle of staffers were professionally but not personally close to her, with the possible exception of Cynthia Crawford (‘Crawfie’), her PA and dresser.
There was no true friend she trusted and in whom she confided, apart from Denis.
Extracted from Margaret Thatcher: Power And Personality by Jonathan Aitken, published by Bloomsbury Continuum on October 24 at £25. To order a copy at £20 (p&p free), call 0844 472 4157. Jonathan Aitken will speak about his book at the Royal Institution on November 7. For details, visit bloomsburyinstitute.com.
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