BIOGRAPHY: A Swim-on-Part in the Goldfish Bowl: A Memoirby Carol ThatcherHeadline, 305pp. £18.99
THERE IS A telling scene in Carol Thatcher's memoir, A Swim-on Part in a Goldfish Bowl, that occurs on the night her mother becomes Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher has just delivered her "where there is discord, may we bring harmony . . . " speech on the steps of Number 10 and the family is ushered through the front door.
Almost at once, she is scooped away by her political team, leaving Carol, her twin brother Mark and her father Denis with nothing to do but watch the blonde coiffure and Tory-blue suit disappear in the distance.
By then Carol is used to viewing her mother from afar, and it is this sense of distance that pervades this memoir. It is there when, as a little girl, Carol watches her mother, after a day at the office, still in overcoat, standing at the stove cooking supper. And it will be there, years later, long after the Downing Street days, when Carol takes her to the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge and worries in advance about making polite lunchtime conversation with the 75-year-old former PM.
Incidentally, it had taken months to find a space in Mrs T's diary to facilitate this lunch.
And what of Thatcher mère? How did she fare as a parent? Early memories consist of elaborate birthday cakes baked by her lily-white hand. She was not a strict mother - her own heavily-disciplined upbringing had turned her against all that - and there were no iron-cast rules to be obeyed. The twins were allowed to make their own decisions on such matters as whether to duck or attend Sunday church.
Indeed, anyone expecting a Mommie Dearest-style expose will be disappointed. Not that it's a rose-tinted gush of daughterly love. Instead what we get is a collage made out of small domestic details: Mrs Thatcher's electric rollers; Denis's G and Ts; lasagne and shepherd's pie. The awful galley-style kitchen in Number 10; the seat with the frill on it reserved for female politicians (to prevent tights from snagging). Chinese takeaways in the formal dining-room during all-night cabinet sessions. Carol tells us what she sees, but rarely what she feels, and if she bears any scars or grudges as the daughter of what surely must be the most formidable woman of modern times - a woman who turned the handbag into a symbol of aggression - she is keeping them to herself.
This makes for a memoir that, if a little short on insight, remains entertaining and refreshingly angst-free. Carol comes across as a likeable sort anyhow; slightly blundering, often worrying about her inability to say her Rs, or the possibility of letting the side down. As for the broader picture - political events are by and large, glazed over. Given that Thatcher is a journalist, this is somewhat surprising. She discusses the Brighton Hotel bombings to some degree, but mainly in relation to the courage shown by her parents. The Falklands war is also explored in a rather one-dimensional way. Northern Ireland gets a look-in, but from the Unionist perspective. The Hunger Strikers barely get a glimpse.
As for Mark, well, his misadventures are scarcely touched on, apart from a bit of light wrist-slapping after the New Guinea coup scandal. The real star of the Thatcher family show, however, has to be Denis. Gin and tonic permanently in hand, golf clubs at the ready, always the calming and witty word, just the sort of old codger I love to find myself seated beside at a dinner party. Denis never gave interviews, his motto being "a whale only gets killed when it spouts".
The most moving chapters are on the death of Denis and the demise of Margaret Thatcher's mind as Alzheimer's takes a grip on it. Her short-term memory has now deteriorated to the extent that she has to be constantly reminded that Denis is dead and won't be coming home.
As the memoir comes to a close, Carol brings us a backstage report from "reality-celebrity" television. This concerns a programme in which "Thatch", as Carol has come to be known, participated, and which she went on to win. She did this by going through a series of endurance tests involving swimming through a river of rats and eating live worms. A chip off the old block, indeed.
Christine Dwyer Hickey is a novelist and short-story writer. Her new novel, Last Train from Liguria, will be published in 2009 by Atlantic Books