One report:
series of mild strokes have led to short-term memory loss and some very public humiliations. Does her failing health alarm him?
"It's very sad - her memory is definitely going," he says with surprising candour. "When you talk to her, you realise she hasn't taken much in, although reports of Alzheimer's are exaggerated."
And is she aware of the problem? "Not completely. But I don't think there will be any improvement. I certainly hope this is an end to her public speaking. She's perfectly capable of making a good speech if it's written out. But if it isn't, she does tend to repeat herself."
ON the contrary
Dear Bill: they've called last orders
Simon Hoggart on the life of Denis Thatcher who died yesterday at 88
Friday June 27, 2003 The Guardian
The received wisdom now is that Denis Thatcher was far from being a gin-soaked old bigot. Well, up to a point. But he certainly relished the world of the golf and rugby club bar, the just-time-for-a-quick-sharpener, the jovial trust-you-to-walk-in-when-it's-my-round culture. Or as he once put it to his wife when she queried his request for a stiff drink on a morning flight to Scotland: "My dear, it is never too early for a gin and tonic."
"He had," said an appreciative lunch guest at Chequers, "a very sharp eye for a refill."
And if the term means anything at all, he was a bigot. Or at least he had the kind of views which make Guardian readers' teeth fur over and fall out.
His considered advice to the Swiss president was to "keep Switzerland white", he talked about "fuzzy-wuzzies" in Brixton, and he happily dismissed any other nation that did not meet his exacting standards - China and Canada among them - as being "full of fuck-all".
In fact, he was the classic type of old-fashioned Englishman you often find in families who came from the colonies, as he would have called New Zealand where his father was born. His views were unreconstructed and largely unchallenged. "Who do you think is worse," he asked at a Commonwealth conference, "Sonny Bloody Ramphal or Ma Sodding Gandhi?"
"He was the kind of man," said one of Mrs Thatcher's more leftwing ministers, "who would never dream that a woman might become prime minister, still less lead the Tory party. But of course when she was there, he believed passionately that no one could possibly take her place."
He articulated what were her most basic instincts. It seemed to him outrageous that something as unimportant as the plight of black South Africans under apartheid should cause the cancellation of a rugby tour. He loathed the unions. Like many people of extreme views, he assumed that those who saw life in more muted shades must be zealots on the other side. So the BBC was the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation" and its channels were "Marxist One" and "Marxist Two".
(Though he could demonstrate unexpected wisdom. In 1982 he told her she should be generous to the Argentinians in defeat, since otherwise they would become long-term enemies.)
He was her greatest support, the only person she could always turn to and always trust. It was often wrongly thought that he was under her thumb. The broadcaster Jim Naughtie tells of chatting to Denis at a No 10 reception. She was running late. When the special branch officer came up and murmured, "the boss is here, sir" he was able to pour his gin into a plant pot with one hand while reaching out to greet her with the other.
But this is the natural defence mechanism of any man who, married to an assertive woman, wants a quiet life. He was capable of barking, "for God's sake, woman!" at her.
He hated the image of a bumbling old soak, though the Dear Bill column in Private Eye was quite affectionate, awarding him a sharp eye and a tart tongue. He used to point out often that a silly old tippler could hardly have run a multimillion-pound business for several decades.
He was the one-man claque, usually a few feet behind her. At press conferences - applause is as unexpected there as party poppers at a Japanese tea ceremony - he would clap and cheer whatever she said.
Margaret Thatcher, far more often than the public knew, could collapse in a heap behind the scenes like a burst football. We all caught one glimpse in 1990 when she left Downing Street for the last time. He often saw it. As one minister and friend of the couple said: "He's great when she's down. He can really lift her mood. But he's dangerous when she's on a high, encouraging her to yet more loopy ideas."
He once said: "For 40 years I have been married to one of the greatest women the world has ever produced. All I could give - small as it may be - was love and loyalty."
Now that support has gone. She is succumbing to what used to be known as senility, and is nowadays usually called Alzheimer's. Her short-term memory is fading rapidly. Friends find her decline almost too painful to watch.
Denis would have been there to the end; Nancy to her Ronald Reagan. It is almost impossible for us to realise how distraught and bereft she now will be.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> A British journalist I had lunch with the other day
> told me that Mrs
> Thatcher has Alzheimer's. I hadn't heard this before
> - has anyone
> else?
>
> Interesting contrast between the U.S. and Britain -
> Reagan wrote a
> letter announcing his diagnosis and retirement from
> public life,
> while Mrs T just disappeared quietly.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
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