Mrs. Thatcher, Castaway

The death of Mrs. Thatcher—the extraordinary, divisive life of Mrs. Thatcher—is perhaps better left to be analyzed by those who have lived in, or thought about, Britain long enough to know what it really means. (My colleague John Cassidy has some of that.) The funeral marches can wait for St. Paul’s. The requiems are her people’s to write. But, by way of commemoration, allow me to offer a bagatelle in the form of a recommendation: listen to Mrs. Thatcher’s turn on Desert Island Discs. She appeared on the show in 1978, the year before she became Prime Minister, as the Right Honorable Margaret Thatcher, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. The timing is perfect—as a castaway, Thatcher is far enough along in her career to make for a commanding guest, but not so entrenched that she need not attempt to curry popularity by being entertaining. And the voice, pre-Streepified and unadulterated!

ROY PLOMLEY: Now, Mrs. Thatcher, how important to you is music?

THATCHER: It’s what I go to when I want to take refuge in something completely different, when I want to go from the very logical life that I’ve lived, and I’ve always been trained to live, really to a different depth of experience.

PLOMLEY: You play the piano, don’t you?

THATCHER: Yes, but I don’t play any longer. I didn’t get time enough to practice, and I couldn’t bear hearing myself play badly. Or, what happens to you, after a time, is you never learn anything new. You go on playing the things which you learned as a young person and never learn anything new, so I’m afraid I just don’t play at all now. One day, when I’ve retired, I’ll take it up again.

It was just a few weeks ago at the gym that I was listening to this—if you think the Stones or Jay-Z or whoever are a goad to maintaining a steady clip on the treadmill, try Mrs. Thatcher and her program of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Verdi, and (here’s the oddball pick) Bob Newhart, introducing tobacco to civilization. Her book choice was a survival manual (that seemed very her); her luxury item, a photo album of her children. (I’d also recommend, as sort of companion piece, listening to the episode featuring Arthur Scargill, Thatcher’s bitter foe from the National Union of Mineworkers. If only they had thought to talk about Verdi…)

At one point, Plomley asks about her early aspirations:

PLOMLEY: Now, as a schoolgirl, what were your ambitions? Why had you set your sights on going up to Oxford?

THATCHER: I had some very strange ambitions. In my church life, I remember missionaries coming and talking to us about their experience. And I remember that, in the early days, I wanted to go into the—it existed then—the Indian civil service, because there was a tremendous desire to serve. And I knew that to do that, you had to go to university. But quite apart from that, you know the opportunity to go to university was, to us, almost a challenge undreamed of. My father had never done it. And I was lucky I was quite good at school, and so it was assumed that I would try to go to university. The subject was clearly marked out for me, and so it just seemed perfectly natural. And what was Oxford or Cambridge were, to me, worlds that I’d heard about, and it’s always a good thing to aim for the top. And I did.

And she did.

Above: Margaret Thatcher in front of the world’s largest Union Jack, in 1983. Photograph by Peter Marlow/Magnum.