Denis Thatcher
Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet , MBE TD (born May 10, 1915 in Lewisham , † June 26, 2003 in Westminster ) was a British businessman and husband of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom , Margaret Thatcher .
Early years, doing business
Denis Thatcher was the oldest child of Thomas Herbert and Kathleen Thatcher. He first attended a boarding school in Bognor Regis , then the Mill Hill School , a public school . At the age of 18 he joined his father's paint and preservatives company. Shortly after the Munich Agreement in 1938, he volunteered in the British Army . During World War II , he served in the Royal Engineers' 34th Searchlight Regiment . To his regret, he was never used in direct combat. He was awarded the Order of Member of the Order of the British Empire and retired as a major in 1946. His father had died in 1943 at the age of 57, and Thatcher now took over the family business.
During the war he had married Margaret Kempson on March 28, 1942 , but the couple divorced in 1948 without children. In February 1949, at a business lunch in Dartford, he met Margaret Roberts, who at the time had just been nominated as a candidate for the Conservative Party for the general election of 1950 . He married her on December 13, 1951. Thatcher's income as an entrepreneur enabled his wife to train as a barrister . The family lived in a house in the Chelsea borough of London and their two children, twins Mark and Carol, were born on August 15, 1953 . Even if the discipline and camaraderie of the army had shaped him, Denis Thatcher was still considered cheerful and disrespectful, in contrast to his wife, who had been shaped by her strict upbringing. In the general election in 1959 Margaret Thatcher was elected as a member of the House of Commons . Denis Thatcher worked hard at his company Atlas Preservative Co. , which in 1957 had 200 employees. In 1964 he suffered a minor nervous breakdown, after which he took a break in South Africa . He then sold his company to Castrol in 1965 , but remained a member of the Atlas management team. When Castrol was taken over by Burmah Oil in 1969 , he also took on a managerial position in the new company. When his wife applied to chair the Conservative Party in 1975, he did not believe in her success, but accompanied and supported her. When she became chairman against his assessment, he retired a little later in order to better support her career. Four years later she became Prime Minister.
Husband of the Prime Minister
In his role as the prime minister's husband, a role that had never existed before in Great Britain, he was very reluctant. He refused interviews and spoke rarely and briefly about his role. When asked about his wife by the press, he called her “the boss”. In December 1979 he criticized the international sporting boycott of South Africa due to the politics of apartheid during a sports association event in which he participated as association treasurer . When it came to a controversial public discussion, he held back even more in public in the period that followed. This reluctance, paradoxically also the satiricals of the satirical magazine Private Eye , in which he was caricatured in the series Dear Bill as a reactionary golfer with a weakness for gin, or the television film Anyone for Denis by John Wells increased his popularity. Denis Thatcher took the satires with humor and jokingly said that if he was not drunk he would play golf. In fact, he tried to privately exonerate his wife in her work as prime minister, but also told her to resign in good time before she had to resign. He realized early on that after Geoffrey Howe's resignation in November 1990, her career was coming to an end.
Next life
As early as 1965 Thatcher had bought a country house near Lamberhurst in Kent , in which he always lived with his wife when they had to live in London not because of his work and later because of their career. After his wife's resignation as Prime Minister, Denis Thatcher was promoted to Baronet , of Scotney in the County of Kent, in 1991 . This elevation to the status of hereditary baronet was the first since 1964 and the last to this day and has been heavily criticized. After leaving the House of Commons in 1992, his wife was granted an independent but not hereditary peerage as Baroness Thatcher for life.
Denis Thatcher died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 88 at Lister Hospital in Westminster, London. The memorial service took place on July 3, 2003 in the chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London. His urn was buried in the garden of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, which was sponsored by him and his wife.
Denis Thatcher in the film
In the feature film Die Eiserne Lady (2011) about the life of Margaret Thatcher, Denis is portrayed by Harry Lloyd (as a young man) and Jim Broadbent .
In the feature film James Bond 007 - On Fatal Mission , Denis Thatcher is portrayed by John Wells at the end of the film.
literature
- Carol Thatcher: Below the parapet. The biography of Denis Thatcher . Harper Collins, London 1996. ISBN 0-00-255605-7
- Christopher Collins: Thatcher, Sir Denis, first baronet (1915-2003). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of September 2014
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jens Witte: Thatcher-Husband: A quick-witted gentleman. In: Spiegel Online . April 8, 2013, accessed June 10, 2018 .
- ^ Royal Hospital Chelsea: Margaret Thatcher Infirmary. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 24, 2017 ; accessed on May 13, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| New title created |
Baronet, of Scotney 1991-2003 |
Mark Thatcher |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thatcher, Denis |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British businessman, husband of Margaret Thatcher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 10, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lewisham |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 26, 2003 |
| Place of death | London |