Editor's Letter

After the Fall

There are few moments in history as mesmerizing as that instant when the world watches a leader free-fall from power. And when Britain's Conservative Party abruptly sent Margaret Thatcher packing

last November 22, perhaps no one was more surprised than she. The legendary ferocity that helped the prime minister weather eleven and a half years of political tempests and armored her as "the Iron Lady" had left Mrs. Thatcher perilously unprepared for the sudden calm of defeat. Like all true warriors, she revealed herself to be a tragically awkward figure off the battlefield. "Sometimes I say, 'Which day is it?' " she admitted with rare candor to contributing editor Maureen Orth (page 120) during a recent visit to the United States, where, thanks to the Reagan years, she remains a mass-market heroine.

But celebrity offers small consolation to the woman forced to look on from the sidelines as the Gulf crisis raged and the government of John Major began to chip away at the privatizing monolith that was Thatcherism. Not for her the stodgy ceremonial fate of other ex-prime ministers. A red-hot property, she can lecture for great sums and could still write

the mega-memoir. But what she really wants is the Thatcher Foundation, a think tank that would allow her to hold forth internationally on her pet issues: free trade, democracy, East-West relations.

Mrs. Thatcher has put this precious brainchild in the hands of her peripatetic, controversial thirtyseven-year-old son, Mark, who alighted in Dallas for several years and, according to his doting mother, made a smashing success in the home-security business. Others maintain that Mark's interests are more far-flung and mysterious, and it's no secret that he has hobnobbed with international arms dealers and traded on his mother's position for financial gain. Mrs. Thatcher may have taken her greatest risk ever in handing Mark the challenge of returning her, triumphant, to center stage. Will she be a star reborn—or just an extra? The world will be watching.

Editor in chief