This weekend the BBC screens Young Margaret: Love, Life And Letters, an intimate portrayal of the young girl who became Britain’s first female Prime Minister.
Linked to her authorised biography, published this week, it draws on poignant correspondence between Margaret Roberts and her sister which reveals a more down-to-earth, feminine view of the Iron Lady.
Here, Alexandra Henderson, the executive producer, who also knew Lady Thatcher, explains why the making of the programme was a personal journey...
A few days before Lady Thatcher’s death I was sorting through old letters belonging to my parents and came upon a small slip of paper detailing what the Prime Minister and Denis liked to drink (whisky and soda for her and dry martini for him) and precisely how it should be served.
This was a prerequisite of Embassy life and my father, as newly arrived ambassador to Washington in 1979, would have been anxious to get it just right for his new boss.
Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and her Washington ambassador Nicholas 'Nicko' Henderson at an official White House dinner for the PM
Margaret Thatcher outside No.10 (with husband Denis) on her appointment as PM in 1979. Nicholas Henderson's daughter Alexandra has reminisced about tea 'above the shop' in Downing Street, as a new documentary Young Margaret: Love, Life And Letters, airs on BBC2 this weekend
My father, Nicholas Henderson, known as Nicko, had been lured out of retirement soon after the Conservative victory by Peter Carrington, the new Foreign Secretary.
He had extended the invitation once Mrs Thatcher’s long-time rival, Ted Heath, had refused the post. Nicko’s characteristic response was to protest that he was ‘past it’ but, nevertheless, he and my mother Mary packed their bags and went.
From that time onwards I witnessed the progress of the new Prime Minister, mostly from my vantage point as a producer for ITN and then the BBC.
I was the producer in charge of Channel 4’s news output at the Conservative Party Conference in 1984 and staying in a seafront hotel along from The Grand when the Brighton bomb went off.
Later I debated with colleagues whether we could really transmit agonising news footage of Norman Tebbit trapped in the rubble, and just hours later sat a few rows from the podium as Mrs Thatcher delivered her conference speech - she was apparently more defiant than ever while those around her were, quite literally, shell shocked.
The PM in Brighton for the Conservative Party Conference, 1984 - soon after the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel. 'When she delivered her conference speech, she was apparently more defiant than ever while those around her were, quite literally, shell shocked,' said Alexandra
Sir Nicholas and Lady Henderson at a party in London, 1997; and, a letter of thanks sent from Margaret Thatcher to 'Nicko', following their visit to Washington
Britain's ambassador to the USA, Sir Nicholas Henderson, arriving at Heathrow from Washington for talks on the Falklands crisis. Family lunches at Chequers over Christmas later became less relaxed affairs as his strong pro-European views inevitably clashed with the Prime Minister's
I was also in Moscow when she wowed the Russian people in 1987 and on the quayside as ‘our boys’ set off for that impossibly far off place, the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Not only that but I had a couple of personal encounters with her. At the end of that first visit to Washington in December 1979, Mrs Thatcher asked my mother if there was anything she could do for her back in London.
It was Christmas, and the first time I would not be with my parents as I had recently married Derry Moore, the Earl of Drogheda and would be with my husband and in-laws. ‘Well it would be lovely if you could check up on my daughter’, my mother said.
No sooner had the Prime Minister returned than I got a call inviting me to come with my husband to tea at No 10. We went along, not quite knowing what to expect.
Ushered into the small flat ‘above the shop’ we had a very cosy tea, Mrs Thatcher talking about how she wasn’t going to waste money redoing the decoration there and other, rather down to earth, topics.
Margaret Roberts aged 23 and, right, aged nine. When Alexandra heard Lady Thatcher's official biographer Charles Moore was on the case, she asked to make a programme linked to her early life, which would coincide with the publication of his book after her death
A young Lady Thatcher is pictured on the right of the picture, with (l to r) her sister, Muriel, her father, Alfred Roberts, and her mother, Beatrice, pictured in the late 1930s
As I looked at the official papers on a nearby chair awaiting her attention, I kept wondering how she could possibly have made the time to see us.
But she did and she included us when my parents went for family lunches at Chequers over Christmas a few years later. These were less relaxed affairs, not least since, by then, my father’s strong pro-European views inevitably clashed with hers.
In fact I didn’t really understand why she put up with him, and us for that matter, other than I suppose, because she enjoyed the jousting sessions.
Alexandra Henderson, left, with literary agent Caroline Michel, is the daughter of Margaret Thatcher's US ambassador and the executive producer of an upcoming BBC documentary
All through this time, I wondered what had made Mrs T what she was. If we are all more or less the product of our childhood, what had been so different about hers? How had she possibly got to where she was through this male culture?
It is difficult to imagine now but I had some experience of what it was like being a woman in a man’s world back then.
I had been part of the experiment to have girls at a boys’ public school, one of just 29 girls out of 800 boys at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, when certain teachers would look the other way as I passed them, hoping, I guess, that by being ignored, we would just go away.
I had worked in a male-dominated newsroom where I was given endless royal stories to write, and as a junior researcher been allowed to make the short background film about Mrs Thatcher for a special programme fronted by Alastair Burnet on the day of the 1975 leadership election because, as this very junior woman, it was a safe to assign me to it since it would be so unlikely to see the light of day.
And I continued over the years to watch her and began to see how isolated she was becoming, and how the big beasts of the jungle would win out in the end.
But my curiosity never abated so that when I heard her official biographer Charles Moore was on the case, I asked to make a programme linked to her early life, which would coincide with the publication of his book after her death.
I got a lot of support for the idea but, while it seemed to me to be a fascinating insight into one of the most important figures of the 20th century, for several, who will always remain ambivalent about Lady Thatcher, it was a step too far.
The documentary did get made. I spoke personally to those who had known a very young Margaret, we sorted through detailed letters from her to her family, in particular her older sister Muriel, about her worries about clothes, what she looked like, her ups and downs at Oxford, her admirers and her first steps in work and politics.
The Prime Minister's retreat, Chequers; and, the lady with the handbag goes canvassing
Muriel Cullen, sister of Margaret Thatcher, on her farm in Essex in 1975. When Margaret was at Oxford in the mid-1940s, their correspondence revolved around clothes, boys and her preoccupation with her figure
At 13, she began writing to Muriel, four years her senior, who had left home to study physiotherapy in Birmingham and detailed both her academic achievements and social excursions, usually to the cinema, in minute detail.
She found the film Quiet Weekend ‘a scream’, but didn’t enjoy Love on the Dole!
By the time Margaret was at Oxford, the correspondence revolved more around clothes, boys and her continuing preoccupation with her figure.
In one letter, Margaret asks Muriel for tips on exercises for ‘reduction of the area around the seat and control of the tummy muscles – oh and also reduction and uplift of the bust’.
In Margaret's first year at university, she met a young army cadet called Tony Bray (as an army officer) studying a short course in general sciences, who became her first boyfriend
Short and not particularly good-looking, but from a solid bourgeois background, Tony met Margaret at the University Conservative Association and they enjoyed an innocent relationship which began by taking tea in one another’s rooms.
They did kiss, however, with Tony noting that she took a delight in physical intimacy but also concluding that by the inexperienced manner in which she kissed, he was probably Margaret’s first boyfriend.
The pair were an item for the six months Tony was at Oxford and, during this time, Margaret regaled Muriel with every detail of the social events the pair attended, making it clear she thought long and hard about what she would wear to each Conservative Ball.
She asked to borrow her sister’s pearls for one event and was anxious that their mother make her exactly the right blue slip ‘cut on the cross from a small yoke’ and panties.
Margaret’s mother Beatrice was an avid seamstress - a quality which Lady Thatcher’s son Mark told us had been passed down to her daughter.
In one fascinating insight, Mark told us that his mother had a little-known penchant for mending things, and would have run up her own curtains for Downing Street if she had had the time.
The influence of both parents on the young Margaret’s life and values is clear to see in her correspondence.
Young Margaret: Love, Life And Letters is on BBC2, Saturday at 9pm
In one letter, she tells Muriel she has treated herself to a special ‘underwear set’, but asks her to keep it to herself as their parents would consider it extravagant.
In the end, I decided she was very much a product of her time: a child of wartime Britain who entered politics in an era when very few women did, and yet, like her contemporaries was almost as intent on finding a husband as she was on pursuing her career.
It is a funny, charming, open look at a little-known aspect of a remarkable woman - judge her as you will.
Young Margaret: Love, Life And Letters is on BBC2, Saturday at 9pm
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