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Lot Essay
On 13 December 1951 Margaret Roberts (1925-2013) became Mrs. Thatcher when she married Denis Thatcher (1915-2003) at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, with the reception afterwards held at 5 Carlton Gardens, the grand London home of Sir Alfred Bossom MP, one of Mrs. Thatcher’s earliest mentors and greatest supporters.
The couple met on 28 February 1949 at the dinner to celebrate her adoption as the Conservative candidate for Dartford following which Denis Thatcher drove her back to London in order that she could catch the 3:40 am milk train back to Colchester where she was then living. The future Mrs. Thatcher recorded the event in a letter to her sister, Muriel Cullen, ‘...a Major Thatcher... was also dining with them and he drove me back to town at midnight. As one would expect he is a perfect gentleman ... Altogether a thrilling evening.’
Mrs. Thatcher’s mother had been a highly competent dress maker and seems to have passed on many of her skills, including a scrupulously keen eye for detail, to her younger daughter. Consequently much time is devoted in Mrs. Thatcher’s surviving early correspondence with her sister to fashion, clothes and accessories. Made in Old Bexley, which neighbours the Dartford constituency where Mrs. Thatcher first stood for parliament, the ensemble is said to have been inspired by Gainsborough’s famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and it is likely that Mrs. Thatcher was heavily involved in the design, if indeed she was not entirely responsible for it. In a 2003 television interview with her daughter, Carol Thatcher, Lady Thatcher discusses her wedding and the outfit, saying that to ‘liven’ up the hat ‘we found the most beautiful great ostrich feather’ and fondly remembers that the ensemble ‘really was quite magnificent’.
The couple met on 28 February 1949 at the dinner to celebrate her adoption as the Conservative candidate for Dartford following which Denis Thatcher drove her back to London in order that she could catch the 3:40 am milk train back to Colchester where she was then living. The future Mrs. Thatcher recorded the event in a letter to her sister, Muriel Cullen, ‘...a Major Thatcher... was also dining with them and he drove me back to town at midnight. As one would expect he is a perfect gentleman ... Altogether a thrilling evening.’
Mrs. Thatcher’s mother had been a highly competent dress maker and seems to have passed on many of her skills, including a scrupulously keen eye for detail, to her younger daughter. Consequently much time is devoted in Mrs. Thatcher’s surviving early correspondence with her sister to fashion, clothes and accessories. Made in Old Bexley, which neighbours the Dartford constituency where Mrs. Thatcher first stood for parliament, the ensemble is said to have been inspired by Gainsborough’s famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and it is likely that Mrs. Thatcher was heavily involved in the design, if indeed she was not entirely responsible for it. In a 2003 television interview with her daughter, Carol Thatcher, Lady Thatcher discusses her wedding and the outfit, saying that to ‘liven’ up the hat ‘we found the most beautiful great ostrich feather’ and fondly remembers that the ensemble ‘really was quite magnificent’.