The name's Thatcher … but don't expect inside scoops from Margaret's daughter
Carol Thatcher may be the late British leader's daughter but she has no exclusive tales to tell
Life under the shadow of a top stateswoman may yield an original script on the person but hardly any inside scoops, the journalist daughter of Britain's first female prime minister says.
Carol Thatcher, a twin daughter of the late Margaret Thatcher, dismissed suggestions she had preferential treatment as a family member of the "Iron Lady", who governed from 1979 to 1990.
"Sometimes when you are in a family of politicians, you're not the first one to know, and you may not know anything in the long run," said Thatcher, who is to speak at 5pm today at a forum titled "How and What and Why do Writers Write?" at the book fair in Wan Chai.
"Just because you have a politician in the family doesn't mean necessarily you always got an insider's track, I can tell you that."
But unlike the children of sports or showbusiness celebrities, she "had to listen to awful lots of politics … because everyone has a view about politics".
The jesting aside, Thatcher, 61, could not help but turn solemn when she recalled the last days of her mother, who died in 2013 at age 87.
"She wasn't herself … and sometimes she said goodbye to people twice, once to the person and then the shadow in her place. But her funeral at St Paul's Cathedral was a magnificent farewell from the queen and the country, and she deserved it."
Margaret Thatcher oversaw preparations for the handover of Hong Kong, and her daughter was unequivocal in her defence of the move.
"She did what she did at the time … In what I've seen of the people of Hong Kong since the 12 hours I've been here, [it] looks nothing less than extremely impressive," she said of the city she was visiting for the third time since 1977.
But she would not be drawn on what her mother would have thought about the city's future when signing the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. "When she was alive, I didn't second-guess her opinion; if you don't mind I'm not going to start now."
Nor would she delve into the Occupy protests last year. "People are … entitled to express their viewpoints. But I have seen too much politics to say any more."
On the 2011 film , she said it "was using the information of ill health as a way to attack her … Because I knew the original, I tend not to see … someone else playing her. I've got my memories, and I treasure them."
