Click image to read the full 1975 article “Margaret Thatcher—Britain’s First Lady Prime Minister?”

Back in 1975, four years before she became prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was profiled in a Post article, which was farsightedly titled “Britain’s First Lady Prime Minister?” At the time, Thatcher was a high-ranking member of Britain’s Tory party.

Those in her party who questioned whether a woman could lead the British government were startled to find her decisive and determined and, as the Russians soon dubbed her, the “Iron Lady.”

She held onto the prime ministership for 11 years and, like her friend Ronald Reagan, significantly reshaped British politics and society.

Click here to read “Margaret Thatcher—Britain’s First Lady Prime Minister?” in full.

Pre-Prime Minister Thatcher The Saturday Evening Post

Mary Soames is the youngest and only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Mary was their “consolation baby” following the death of their daughter, Marigold. She was born in 1922 and brought up at the family home known as Chartwell in Kent. Her bond with her father, as shown in this book, was immediate, extremely warm, and lasted to the end of the great man’s life. Her relationship with her mother didn’t really bloom until later, but Mary always had the highest regard and admiration for her.

Her nurse, Nana, helped raise her and influenced the person she grew to be. They remained close throughout her life. Her mother traveled often and her father, “WSC” as Mary liked to refer to him, was very much a hands-on, involved parent, even in Mary’s very early years. This is surprising when you consider the demands of his work and his importance in global politics.

Because Mary’s siblings were much older than she, Mary grew up in the company of adults; she was directly involved in her parents’ associations. Their friends included many powerful people, famous artists and entertainers from all over the globe. Chaplain, De Gaulle, T.E. Lawrence/Shaw, the Roosevelts, among many others, were known to Mary and she to them.

Following school, in 1941, she joined the Army Transport Service with a desire to make a difference and to do her part for the war. She later trained and served in anti-aircraft batteries in England and Europe. She traveled extensively with her father on his wartime journeys.

It seems clear that the bulk of this book came directly from Mary’s diaries, which she started in childhood, as well as an excellent recollection of her life’s many memorable moments. She is thorough in her writing, often including menus and guest lists in the pages of the events described.

She made many friends her own age along the way and even broke some hearts. This book comes to a rather sudden end when, at the age of 25, Mary meets and marries Christopher Soames. This leads me to wonder if there will be a second book, telling the rest of the story of Mary’s remarkable life.

A Daughter’s Tale: The Memoir of Winston Churchill’s Youngest Child is available at Amazon.

Book Review: A Daughter’s Tale The Saturday Evening Post

International rivalries became a new hurdle in the Olympic games.

Amid the celebration of the 30th Olympiad, it’s worthwhile recalling the 1908 London Olympics, and and how it changed the international games.

The Fourth Olympiad was the first truly international Olympic games held outside of Greece. It was the first Olympics to include winter events and women’s gymnastics. It introduced the rule that prohibited individual competitors; only members of national teams were allowed to participate.

And it was at the London Olympics that international squabble first began to intrude.

The feuding began at the opening ceremony, when the British Olympic committee failed to fly a U.S. flag over the stadium. The American athletes saw this and were furious. When the U.S. flag bearer marched past King Edward and the royal family, he refused to dip his flag in salute.

The British officials responded to this insult with a gesture intended to “restore the importance of the monarchy.” They changed the route of the marathon so that it would begin at Windsor Castle, directly beneath the windows of the Royal Nursery, and end at the royal box where the King awaited the winner. The fact that the new route  added another 195 meters to the race didn’t seem important. (In fact, this precedent caused the Olympic committee to change the 25-mile marathon to a 26-mile event.)

Opening ceremonies, April 27, 1908.

Soon the complaining and protests began. After the Americans lost to England in the tug-of-war, they protested that the British team’s shoes were illegal. The United States also protested the pole-vault regulations, the official medal count, and the set-up of the 800-meter and the 1,500-meter race. And American runners were outraged when the British disqualified the American winner of the 400-meter race for foul play.

Fans from the United States added to the situation: Throughout the games, they displayed what the British felt was raucous, partisan cheering and generally poor sportsmanship. It was particularly noticeable at the finish of the marathon, as the Post reported:

When the Italian had fallen and Hayes, the American, had won, several more Americans came in, pretty fresh, then some runners of other nationalities, and, finally, an Englishman arrived.

The Americans were very sore over the treatment they had received, they had heard nothing for days but boasts that an Englishman could win the Marathon, and when the English runner finally did appear, way back in the nick, an immense American, leaning far out of his box, bellowed through a megaphone:

“Welcome to our fair city!”

Dorando Pietri struggling to the finish line with a little help from his friends.

The marathon is a story in itself. The leader was Italian Dorando Pietri who entered the stadium within sight of the finish line, but collapsed repeatedly. Two British officials stepped forward and ‘helped’ Pietri across the finish line. It might not have been an intentional effort to prevent the American Johnny Hayes from winning, but the American team didn’t see it that way. The Irish-American Athletic Club protested vehemently. Pietri was disqualified. Hayes won the gold.

The American team complained so often about biased British judges that the International Olympic Committee made a ruling—another first!—that future games would use judges from several different countries in future games.

Today it’s surprising to read of the intense, often bitter rivalry between Britain and America. But in the early 1900s, America’s sudden emergence as a colonial power in the Pacific challenged Great Britain’s global dominance.

Americans were still considered by many (including the future King George V) as rude and overbearing. Many in England didn’t like the American women who were marrying English lords for their titles. And Americans didn’t like the $220 million of U.S. wealth that accompanied these brides to England to shore up their noble husband’s estates.

Johnny Hayes, American gold medalist, when he was still trying to catch up with Pietri

Many Americans felt it was patriotic to dislike the British, even 120 years after the Revolution. Irish-Americans, who made up a sizeable portion of our immigrants, had more recent grievances with the United Kingdom. And now that the United States saw a possibility of becoming a global power, it needed to show it was the equal of England, and would tolerate no hint of American inferiority.

So it’s not surprising to find an occasional slap at Britain in Post editorials, like “The Desire to Win” from 1905. The editors said Britain’s sportsmanship, like its military, had become decadent because it was no longer interested in “excelling in all things, small as well as great.”

Then, shortly before the London Olympics, the English Olympic committee announced it would closely examine the qualifications of American athletes to ensure they were truly amateurs. The Post’s editors responded with a blistering editorial:

This is a proper and timely advertisement of a promise to do full duty. We hope [it indicates] the committee’s courageous intentions regarding entries from its own country.

Certainly American sportsmen trust the English committee will give its home athletes a more thorough inspection, as to their ethical qualifications, than has been the case in any previous competition of an international character.

Some Americans have taken this announcement of the English committee as a bit of mud-slinging, but, if so intended, as I doubt, it may be overlooked as another Swettenhamism.*

*This refers to a recent dispute in Jamaica. When a hurricane struck the island, the admiral on a U.S. Navy vessel sent marines ashore to protect the property of Americans. The island’s British governor, Alexander Swettenham, issued a harsh criticism, which asked how America would like Royal marines landing in New York to protect British property. He was soon ordered to issue an apology, but Americans remained incensed for months afterward.

Americans who are familiar with the athletic conditions of the two countries will not take very seriously any covert attack by Englishmen, who are hardly in a position to indulge in the smallest character-besmirching foray.

Well-informed Britishers know, to their sorrow, the depth of their athletic degradation. Outside of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities, track athletics in England reek with professionalism and dishonesty. There is an athletic association which pretends to govern the amateur sport of Great Britain, but it has proved wholly incompetent. The bookmakers rule at track meets, and their corrupting influences upon certain (and the best, athletically speaking) grades of non-university athletes have swept over the half-hearted efforts of the governing body.

If the London Olympic committee lives up to its advertised intention, the English team will have few prominent athletes outside of those who are numbered on the university lists.

The situation is different in America, where the Amateur Athletic Union holds the lines in a firm grasp. Here track athletic laws are made comprehensive and are honestly enforced, which is more than can be said for England. We have our troubles, it is true, now and again—and man is not infallible on either side of the Atlantic.

It will be well, if for the protection of its own athletes, the American Union scans with careful eye the list of English non-university entries.

Johnny Hayes and Humphrey O'Sullivan

1908: The Olympics Get Political. And Commercial. The Saturday Evening Post

Meanwhile, the Queen, throughout her 57 year reign, has been steadily giving up privileges other monarchs took for granted. Her royal household — including her family, her staff, and the upkeep on several houses — is $60 Million each year.  While this is a princely sum, it has been frozen for 20 years and its purchasing power has dropped by 75%. Moreover, the Queen now pays income tax, which further reduces that figure.

It’s a precarious position, this Queen business. Without any true power of her own, her income is subject to the approval of Parliament, which can deny any expense it doesn’t like.  Meanwhile, there is significant number of Britons who call for the end to a monarchy that seems expensive and silly to them.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth must regularly appear among her subjects and work her royal charm to build support and allegience to herself. As British journalist Malcom Muggeridge observed in the Post back in 1957:

When, as in the case of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch only reigns, with no ruling powers whatsoever, it is inevitable that the focus of interest should be transferred from the office to the person.

It is the Queen herself, her family, her associates, her way of life, which hold the public attention. The role she has inherited is purely symbolic, and the functions that go with it are purely ceremonial. Because she has no power, she must be, in herself, wondrous. If she were ordinary, she would be nothing.

She must be alluring, removed from the necessities and inadequacies of ordinary men and women—a creature of this world in the sense that she has a home, a husband and children, and yet not quite of this world in that she is a queen.

Fortunately, Muggeridge concedes, the Queen does a fairly good job of projecting this royal mystique, despite the disenchanted mood of post-war Britain.

The monarchy has grown more glamorous in circumstances which, theoretically, should have reduced it to the proportions of a Scandinavian dynasty.

Debutantes throng more numerously and eagerly than ever to be presented at court. Mayors and other local dignitaries proudly rustle up gray top hats for the Buckingham Palace garden parties. Labor ministers lay aside their red ties and delightedly attire themselves in knee breeches to attend upon Her Majesty.

This is the Queen’s greatest, and most historic service to the country: dispensing royal approval and honors. Each year, hundreds of British citizens are nominated for knighthood, or an order of chivalry like Commander of the British Empire. The Queen, advised by the Prime Minister’s cabinet, grants these awards to a handful of distinguished, and proud, men and women. The title lack the privileges they once conveyed, but they’re still highly valued. Few Britons turn down them down.

Strangely enough, people are still clamorous for these baubles, which constitute an inexpensive form of political patronage. Happy the government that can bribe with knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages rather than with jobs and money. It is so much cheaper and less complicated.

The Queen would seem to be essential to this procedure. If the honors were conferred by a president or a prime minister, the odds are that they would lose some of their allure. The worthy alderman kneels ecstatically with creaking joints before the Queen to receive the accolade; the aged party hack finds one more canter in him when it is a question of being elevated to the peerage by Her Majesty in person.

Answering the question posed by his article, “Does England Really Need A Queen?” Muggeridge concludes:

Elizabeth II as colonel-in-chief of the Royal Horse Guards at the Trooping of the Colour.

The British monarchy does fulfill a purpose. It provides a symbolic head of state transcending the politicians who go in and out of office, who, as King Lear so wonderfully said, “ebb and flow by the moon.”

It expresses that continuity which has enabled Britain to survive two great revolutions—the French and the Russian—and two ruinous and destructive world wars, without being torn by civil conflict. But this function must not only be fulfilled. It must be seen to be fulfilled.

The Queen, in other words, must be put across, not only as a charming wife and mother who dresses pleasingly, if not always elegantly, who wins hearts wherever she goes, and who presides gracefully over a lunch or dinner table even when her guests include politicians, writers and statesmen, rather than her own intimates, sharing her own simple, unintellectual tastes.

She must be put across, as well, a useful unifying element in a society full of actual and potential discord.

What The Queen Does For A Living The Saturday Evening Post