Defense and Technology Supplement

ONCE a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him to shed it. At every important stage of his career, it steps between him and the public so that people seem to see and hear not the man himself but the invented personality to which he has been reduced.

My public image was on the whole not a disadvantageous one; I was “the Iron Lady,” “Battling Maggie,” “Attila the Hen,” etc. Since these generally gave opponents the impression I was a hard nut to crack, I was glad to be so portrayed, even though no real person could be so single-mindedly tough. In one respect, however, I suffered: whenever the topic of Europe arose, I was usually depicted as a narrow, nostalgic nationalist who could not bear to see the feudal trappings of Britain’s ancien régime crumble into dust like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, when the sunlight of Europe’s rational modernity was turned upon them. I was “isolated,” “backward-looking,” “rooted in the past,” “clinging to the wreckage of Empire,” and “obsessed with the outdated notion of sovereignty.” And virtually all my statements on Europe were read in that light.

MT

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Margaret Thatcher

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ONCE a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him to shed it. At every important stage of his career, it steps between him and the public so that people seem to see and hear not the man himself but the invented personality to which he has been reduced.

My public image was on the whole not a disadvantageous one; I was “the Iron Lady,” “Battling Maggie,” “Attila the Hen,” etc. Since these generally gave opponents the impression I was a hard nut to crack, I was glad to be so portrayed, even though no real person could be so single-mindedly tough. In one respect, however, I suffered: whenever the topic of Europe arose, I was usually depicted as a narrow, nostalgic nationalist who could not bear to see the feudal trappings of Britain’s ancien régime crumble into dust like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, when the sunlight of Europe’s rational modernity was turned upon them. I was “isolated,” “backward-looking,” “rooted in the past,” “clinging to the wreckage of Empire,” and “obsessed with the outdated notion of sovereignty.” And virtually all my statements on Europe were read in that light.