Bravo

I rather hoped I wouldn't get drawn into all the ghoulishness that sprang up after the death of Lady Thatcher, but this piece by Grace Dent is too good to pass over. I think the one comment that annoyed me most was that by Glenda Jackson in the debate yesterday: "A woman? Not on my terms." Well, on that subject:

Oh but then Thatcher wasn’t a proper woman, it seems; neither was she a feminist, or a believer in women, in fact she hated women, we’re told. She kept women down. Again, I didn’t agree with Thatcher on a legion of ideas, but thank God as a little girl I knew the story – told to me on Saturday Superstore and numerous other channels – of her becoming a research chemist, retraining as barrister, and determinedly elbowing her way into places men had never permitted us before. “I always felt sorry for her children,” mumbled Russell Brand, which is coincidentally what dusty old Conservative farts in the 1950s said when she pitched up in a frock and tried to prise away a little power. “Oh the children, the poor children”. I disliked Thatcher, but would I be here – still very often the only woman at the table, the only woman on the panel show, the only woman on the judging body, the token woman on the shortlist – without her as an example?

Damn right. I've got two daughters, and when I tell them that they can be anything they want to be (not just a princess...) I can say that one of our greatest Prime Ministers was a girl, just like them.