Margaret Thatcher giving Queen Elizabeth II one of her typical deep curtseys on arrival at Claridge’s Hotel for the former prime minister’s seventieth birthday dinner, October 16, 1995
They were, as the saying goes, “Chalk and Cheese.” Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s powerful prime minister from 1979 to 1990, could not have been more different in temperament, style, and personality. Yet they forged an effective working relationship that nevertheless prompted endless speculation. Were there underlying tensions between them? Did the Queen disagree with Thatcher’s approach to governing Britain?
Yoked together by fate for more than a decade, the Queen and Thatcher made history as the first female monarch and female prime minister. Neither woman styled herself as a feminist. But when Elizabeth II took the throne in February 1952, Thatcher, then a Conservative politician on the rise, wrote in a newspaper column that she hoped the Queen’s accession “can help to remove the last shreds of prejudice against women aspiring to the highest places.”
While Elizabeth II was much beloved, Thatcher had many detractors, especially in the press, for tough policies that stimulated the British economy by taking on formidable labor unions, cutting public spending, reducing taxes, and deregulating business. Thatcher also sparked controversy by opposing sanctions to pressure South Africa into ending apartheid and strongly resisting the political demands of the Irish Republican Army.
Mutual respect and admiration
I have been thinking a lot about these two remarkable women because of the centenary of Thatcher’s birth on October 13—to be followed by the centenary of Elizabeth II’s birth just six months later in April 2026. While researching Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, I spoke to individuals who worked closely with the Queen and her First Minister, as well as insightful friends of both women. Mindful of the differences, I came away with a firm view that their mutual respect and admiration overrode the irritation and frustration that occur in any long-term relationship. They were ultimately united by discipline, patriotism, and devotion to duty.
There is no doubt that dramatic depictions of the Queen and Thatcher on stage and screen created the impression that they did not fundamentally get along. The two women clashed in the wildly successful Netflix series The Crown, and before that in the award-winning play about the Queen and her prime ministers, The Audience. In The Crown especially, the fictional scenes seemed not only plausible but real. These portrayals were also often unfair, unkind, and untrue.
How do I know this? In addition to my book interviews, I had the added perspective of having been a consultant on The Audience with Peter Morgan, the playwright who went on to create six seasons of The Crown. Peter and I worked together for more than a year. We exchanged emails, had tea and lunch, and talked on the phone, hashing out biographical details, character traits, and important events. I greatly admired Peter’s wit, speed, and skill as a writer. It was fascinating to crawl inside his creative process, and I felt proud of the stage play that stormed London’s West End as well as Broadway.
Haydn Gwynne as Margaret Thatcher, dropping the deepest curtsey to Helen Mirren as the Queen in the London production of The Audience
Yet I also felt disquiet over his take on Margaret Thatcher and the Queen. I pushed back, but to no avail. It was Morgan’s play, after all, and I had to defer to his point of view. On stage, the drama was also intrinsically artificial. Conversations between the monarch and the prime minister were completely confidential, so the dramatist had the latitude to invent everything. But when Morgan revisited the two women in season four of The Crown, he intensified his fictitious atmosphere of conflict, making up dialogue and scenes that did them both a disservice.
“Uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive”
For Margaret Thatcher’s centennial, it seems like a good moment to shed light on her real-life dealings with the Queen and to explain Peter Morgan’s creative decisions behind a portrayal in The Audience that was at odds with reality. The crucial flashpoint in the play revolved around an explosive page-one story in The Sunday Times on July 20, 1986, that said “the Queen considers the prime minister’s approach” to her domestic and foreign policies “often to be uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive.”