On November 29, 1990, Margaret Thatcher began her first full day as a former prime minister. She had nowhere suitable to live, no proper office and no staff to answer the sacks of mail that piled up in the hallway of a friend. Her biographer, Charles Moore, paints a picture of a totally disorientated woman. She struggled to master the novelty of a TV remote control and to leave her first message on an answering machine. When her hot water broke down one Saturday morning, she called her former principal private secretary Sir Charles Powell and asked for his advice.

Source: The Times March 23, 2021 16:52 UTC