All the Iron Ladies

The day Mrs Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition was a nightmare. Her victory over Mr Heath meant that I had to do a cartoon featuring her for the next day’s Daily Telegraph. But her arrival had been so swift that I barely knew who she was, and had almost no idea what she looked like. I had a problem.

I don’t remember getting the photographs from her file in the picture library to draw from. My memory begins as I sat at my desk and looked through them. They were all close-ups of her teeth and upper gums, bared in smiles, under various pantomime ugly-sister hats. In those days, all Tory women wore peculiar hats most of the time. I did not have enough to go on. I struggled for hours to draw her likeness and I still feel the pain of my failure. In the end, the best I could do was a caricature of one of her hats.

By studying television, newspaper photographs, and the clever work of other cartoonists in the coming weeks I figured out how to draw her, and I developed a hieroglyph that stood for Mrs. Thatcher. This is what political cartoonists, producing up to five cartoons a week, are forced to do. There is not time to come up with a new caricature every day.

Mrs Thatcher’s likeness lay in her complex bouffant hair-dos, downward-slanting eyes, strong cheekbones, pearls, and her shapely pursed lips. There were also the expressions that flickered over her face: sometimes stern and frowning, she could, in those early days, look uncertain and nervous.

Big Jim Callaghan appeared to be content to have her as his opponent, while, just off-stage right, Mr Heath nursed his rage and humiliation and threatened to go off at any minute with a gigantic bang.