{"id":996,"date":"2025-10-14T08:13:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/996\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T08:13:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:13:34","slug":"queen-elizabeth-ii-and-margaret-thatchers-complex-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/996\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Complex Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Powerful female leaders have long been a trademark of England. After all, Queen Elizabeth II<\/a> wasn\u2019t just the longest-ruling monarch, but she was also the only female member of the British royal family<\/a> to have served on active duty with the British Armed Forces, even having served during World War II<\/a>. And there was also Margaret Thatcher<\/a>, who, despite her controversial policies dubbing her \u201cIron Lady,\u201d made her mark as the first female prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister in 150 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Thatcher\u2019s 11-year term from 1979 to 1990 falling within the queen\u2019s rule, the women also served the European nation simultaneously for more than a decade\u2014and their roles required them to work together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe queen also has a special relationship with the Prime Minister, retaining the right to appoint and also meeting with him or her on a regular basis,\u201d the official royal site describes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Whatever happened behind the scenes during those meetings, tales of a difficult dynamic between the women leaders often topped the headlines of the British media, perhaps egged on by their similarities. <\/p>\n

Thatcher and Elizabeth were born six months apart<\/p>\n

While Thatcher was born into a modest family who lived in an apartment above the grocery store they ran and Queen Elizabeth II was, of course, born with a jeweled silver spoon in her mouth, the two Brits were remarkably close in age. <\/p>\n

Born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, England, on October 13, 1925, Thatcher was just six months older than Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, who was born in London on April 21, 1926.<\/p>\n

This also made Thatcher the closest prime minister in age<\/a> to the queen during her reign. <\/p>\n

The two women met every week for 11 years<\/p>\n

One of the queen\u2019s major duties was to hold meetings called Audiences, which are a \u201ckey element of the queen\u2019s day-to-day work, and enable her to give time and focus to key individuals,\u201d the royal site explains<\/a>. And throughout her reign, she held a weekly Audience with the serving prime minister to discuss governmental issues. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Audience is held in an Audience room in her apartments and is entirely private,\u201d the site continues. \u201cThough the queen remains politically neutral on all matters, she is able to \u2018advise and warn\u2019 her ministers\u2014including her Prime Minister\u2014when necessary.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s during these unrecorded meetings that much of the tension between the two reportedly began to form. According to a 2014 documentary The Queen and Her Prime Ministers, Thatcher would arrive 15 minutes too early, and the queen would always make her wait.<\/p>\n

Their interaction was \u201cprofessional, formal, and famously stiff,\u201d according to CNN<\/a>, which also reported that the prime minister viewed the annual visits to the Balmoral royal home as \u201cinterrupting her work.\u201d The outlet also called their relationship \u201ctense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Audiences were rarely very productive because Mrs. Thatcher was nervous,\u201d journalist Charles Moore wrote in his 2015 biography, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: From Grantham to the Falklands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"queenGetty Images<\/p>\n

Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher at Thatcher\u2019s 70th birthday celebration on October 16, 1995<\/p>\n

Their personalities may have caused clashes<\/p>\n

The root of their tension may have come from their opposing personality styles. The royal was said to have a \u201cdry wit,\u201d while Thatcher didn\u2019t have much of a sense of humor\u2014reportedly<\/a> going as far as needing to have a Monty Python joke described to her. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, conversations with Thatcher were said to often<\/a> \u201cgo on and on\u201d\u2014as was her determination to stay in 10 Downing Street. Thatcher held a record three terms as prime minister until she resigned<\/a> in 1990. In that respect, the two women were more alike than different. Queen Elizabeth II sat the throne for 70 years, until her death at 96.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth found Thatcher \u2018uncaring\u2019<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest tension that played out between the two women came in 1986 when a newspaper headline in the Sunday Times noted<\/a> that the queen was dismayed by an \u201cuncaring\u201d Thatcher.<\/p>\n

The report<\/a> cited their different stances on sanctions on South Africa\u2019s white-led government during apartheid (which didn\u2019t end until 1994). As the titular head of the Commonwealth, the queen was concerned about tensions between Thatcher and the other Commonwealth leaders, and also felt the prime minister\u2019s domestic policy was \u201cuncaring, confrontational, and divisive,\u201d AP reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As soon as the story came out, Buckingham Palace issued a statement<\/a>: \u201cAs with all previous prime ministers, the queen enjoys a relationship of the closest confidentiality with Mrs. Thatcher and reports purporting to be the queen\u2019s opinions of government policies are entirely without foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Sunday Times stood by its reporting\u2014and found the palace\u2019s statement predictable. \u201cI think what is said in public and what is said in private are two different things and the palace have to maintain their position,\u201d the paper\u2019s editor Andrew Neil said at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Moore biography claimed<\/a> that the queen called the prime minister herself to apologize after the incident. <\/p>\n

The queen\u2019s actions spoke louder than words<\/p>\n

Even after Thatcher\u2019s death in 2013 of a stroke, the storied tension between the Buckingham Palace monarch and the Downing Street leader continued. A 2015 book by television producer Dean Palmer focused solely on their relationship called The Queen and Mrs. Thatcher: An Inconvenient Relationship<\/a> claimed<\/a> even more outrageous drama behind the scenes, like that the queen would mock Thatcher\u2019s accent.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, perhaps it was the noble actions of the queen after Thatcher was forced out of her position by her Cabinet in 1990 that showed the truth behind their relationship. According to The Independent UK<\/a>, the royal felt so bad about the situation that she extended an invite to the ousted prime minister to join her in a horse racing meeting. While Thatcher didn\u2019t accept, she was reportedly moved by the gesture.<\/p>\n

What she did accept was Britain\u2019s highest honor, the Order of the Merit, granted to her by the queen in December 1990, as well as a baronetcy for her husband who became Sir Denis Thatcher.<\/p>\n

And the queen even broke protocol after Thatcher\u2019s death, attending her funeral<\/a>, even though according to tradition, the monarch does not attend the funerals of those who are commoners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Powerful female leaders have long been a trademark of England. After all, Queen Elizabeth II wasn\u2019t just the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1220,1221,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-core","tag-explainer","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}