When they leave office, most prime ministers recede into history. There are exceptions, including Churchill. 'Appeasement' is still part of political debate. But in terms of current resonance, even the great war leader pales by comparison with Margaret Thatcher. There has never been a more unquiet political grave.
To many Tories, she is the once and future queen, the standard by which all her successors have been judged, usually unfavourably. In traditional Labour areas, she is the wicked witch and they use her name to frighten naughty children at bed-time. 'If you don't go to sleep quietly, Maggie'll get you, with her cuts.'
As a young sprog in the Conservative Research Department, I occasionally worked with her on speeches. Apropos cuts, what first drew me to her attention was a press release I had drafted for Reg Prentice, which included an obvious point: that only free enterprise economies could create the resources to pay for decent pensions, health and education. No mention of cuts there.
Anyway, I was summoned to the Thatchery to help with a speech. It is easy to summarise the experience: exhausting and frustrating in equal measure.
My first draft was around 5000 words. Her opening question: 'Bruce, where is the structure?' So, the second draft looked like a brutalist building: structure sticking out everywhere. Next question: 'What is the theme?' 'Couldn't you have said that last time?' I thought to myself. It rapidly became clear that she never liked any speech draft. There was some magic, some transformative rhetoric, that she always sought but never - in her own mind - found. That said, her Party Conference speeches never failed to thrill her audience.
By the end of the speech-writing process, I would have written about 20,000 words and had no linguistic resources left. Then came the great victory. Her first speech as PM was scheduled to be in Scotland a week on Saturday. I was summoned as the sole draftsman. We met on the Tuesday and - I thought that the age of miracles may not have been over - she liked the speech. 'Now that I'm Prime Minister, people write speeches I enjoy.'
I had a fantasy. Might there be a speech-writing job going in No.10? 'No, Anderson, don't be crazy.' But, but...
There were a few trifling points to change and we were then to meet early on Friday evening. Ian Gow, that wonderful PPS, was there waiting with me. He announced that he himself was speaking that evening in his constituency. 'So you're not waiting for the drafting session?' I enquired. 'What drafting session?' he replied. 'I don't really know why we need this meeting. You'll receive a halo: I'll get a mention in dispatches, we'll both have a glass of Prime Ministerial whisky, and then we'll go our separate ways.' 'Ian, I suspect that we'll still be here at midnight.' 'Nonsense' Ian beamed at me: 'nonsense.'
At 1.30 am, forget beaming, forget mentions in dispatches, Ian looked like a man who had been at the front-line of the Somme for six weeks. The speech which she had liked had been comprehensively trashed. If I had not seen all that happening to better men than me, I would have felt like slipping out of the room and making a hole in the Thames. 'Prime Minister,' said Ian: 'there must be someone in these islands who can write speeches for you.' (Obviously not Anderson B.) 'No' came the reply. 'I've found no-one.' I almost drew comfort from not being the only man found wanting. Ian persevered. 'On Monday morning, I'll phone William Rees-Mogg' (then the Editor of the Times). 'No point. He'll send me Bernard Levin. I've tried him, but he can't write speeches.' 'In that case I'll talk to Bill Deedes' (Editor of the Telegraph). 'No good. He'll offer Peter Utley. Peter can do perorations, but not the rest of the speech.'
I chimed in. 'Prime Minister, Chris Patten has been a pretty good speech-writer over the years' (which he certainly had.) 'Chris can't think conceptually.' I filed that away to tease Chris with later: some consolation.
Several years later, I had one success. The PM was making a speech in Scotland. Could I provide a few words? I did. I had her refer to her own creed, along the following lines. 'It is said that a lot of Scots do not approve of Thatcherism. I can't believe that this is true. Long before I was thought of, you invented it. David Hume, Adam Smith and the other luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment enunciated commonsense principles which have remained true down the centuries. That is Thatcherism.' She used my words: a form of immortality. But she remained a nightmare for her speechwriters to the end.
I remember conversations with Ronnie Millar, the playwright who could just about control her partly because he was older. 'I love-hate that woman,' he would say. 'I can't tell you how intensely I love-hate her.' She put him in for a well-deserved knighthood. He said that his first reaction was embarrassment. If there was a Heaven, and he met the knights who had fought at Crecy or Agincourt, what would they think? Then he remembered the curling sandwiches at 4 a.m. in the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool, a few hours before the PM was due on the platform, while she insisted that this was the worst speech she had ever seen and that they would have to start again from scratch. He decided that when they heard all that, the knights of old might well have accepted him as a comrade. 'Rather you than me, mate. I'd prefer to face the French cavalry any day.'
That great man Charles Powell, one of the most important civil servants of the post-war era, nicknamed her 'La Bionda,' an appropriate play on words. In Italian it just means the blonde. In English, it sounds like 'beyond'. So she was, as all those who worked closely with her understood.
Early in her Premiership, there was a crisis; not an unusual occurrence. A number of very senior officials were summoned. In those days, they were all men. Hence her opening question: 'Have you told your wives that you'll be late home for dinner?' They had not. 'Right,' she said. 'You make those phone-calls and I'll organise some sandwiches.'
The chap who told me that added that it was impossible not to feel an unrush of affection for her. Moreover, and however impossible she could be at moments when affection was harder to feel, he always knew that while he was working for her, he was helping to make history. So she did. So she still does.