BRITAIN: 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 liberal 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, south London, and he happily dismissed any other nation that did not meet his exacting standards - China and Canada among them - as being "full of f--k-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 left-wing 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 trade 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 Margaret 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. Margaret 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 the satirical magazine 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. Denis would have been there to the end; Nancy to Margaret's Ronald Reagan. It is impossible to realise how distraught and bereft she now will be. - (Guardian Service)