Reflection of Thatcher and the media through four courtiers

Peter Stothard  explains portraits of four courtiers of Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister.  He talks about Seneca, the wealthy Roman writer, philosopher and adviser to Emperor Nero, in the first century AD. He had watched the destruction of the Wapping site where Times and the Times Literary Supplement had their most difficult period.  From the dust and destruction of a collapsing newspaper emerges the portrait of the Senecans. What happens when journalist ventures into politics, is that their lives end in failure, or hurt feeling.

The four consultants were David Hart, a wealthy property developer, would-be playwright and would-be prime ministerial adviser, Frank Johnson, the political sketch writer for Daily Telegraph and The Times, a favourite journalist of Thatcher’s; Sir Ronald Miller,  Playwright and creator of some of Thatcher’s best-remembered speeches and Lord Wyatt ( Woodrow) former Labour MP in the 1970s who became a convert to Thatcherism.

All pressurised Peter Stothard to use his editorial position to support her and at stime suppress criticising stories that might  reflect badly.

In Seneca they found” the servant fo a new kind of government at Rome”, like Margaret who led the new kind of government in London. Margaret Thatcher tried to posit ideals in public life as virtues in themselves before they had been tested in practice.

David Hart  was dedicated to fighting the notorious striking miners in the year-long stoppage of 1984-85 headed by Arthur Sacargill,  who made a mere coal strike into a life and death conflict.

 

The Senecans:Four Men and Margaret Thatcher by Peter Stothard, Duckworth £20/ The Overlook Press $29.95, 304 pages