Before Thatcherism
Sir: During a business trip to Accra back in 1961, a colleague and I were invited to a small social gathering at the house of a Ghanaian government official. Among the other visiting firemen present there was a somewhat older businessman with whom we fell into conversation. It emerged that this exceptionally cheerful, modest and pleasant character worked for an oil com- pany, had two young children and was married to a young Tory back-bencher who, he assured us, would in due course become the first female Prime Minister.
For people who crash around the world in export activities, such casual encounters are commonplace and one forgets most of them: but I have never forgotten this man's utter confidence and pride in his wife. The author of your profile (7 May) is absolutely right — without Denis, Margaret Thatch- er, with all her gifts, might indeed never have made it.
Roger Stacey 41 North Road, Hertford
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