We have become a grandmother
1989 quotation by Margaret Thatcher / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"We have become a grandmother" was a phrase uttered by Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in 1989. It has attracted notoriety for her usage of the royal we.[lower-alpha 1]
"We have become a grandmother" | |
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Remarks on becoming a grandmother[1] | |
Statement outside No. 10 on YouTube[2] |
Thatcher made the remark on 3 March 1989 following the birth of her first grandchild, Michael Thatcher, the child of her son Mark Thatcher and his wife Diane Burgdorf.[1] Thatcher made the statement to press gathered outside 10 Downing Street.[3] Dean Palmer, in his 2015 book The Queen and Mrs Thatcher, wrote that Thatcher emerged from Downing Street at "great speed" and that she was dressed in "oversized" pearl earrings, a purple coat trimmed with fur and "blonde hair as rigid as fibreglass".[3]
Her grandson was born close to the tenth anniversary of the start of Thatcher's premiership.[4] The academic Heather Nunn wrote in her 2002 book Thatcher, Politics and Fantasy that the birth of Michael showed that "As a grandmother her maternal credentials were extended a generation to fuel [her] political vision for the next twenty years".[5]
Thatcher's Downing Street press secretary, Bernard Ingham, wrote in his diary that he would "never live down" the incident, as prime ministers are "thought to be intensively rehearsed before they utter a word to the world", but that the incident "add[ed] to the gaiety of the nation".[6]