Shepherd’s pie in Downing Street

How Margaret Thatcher brought her own flavour to Number 10.

Lady Thatcher's detractors accused her of many things, but they could never accuse her of being spoilt. Her tastes were simple: she liked nursery food and drank whisky and soda. Number Ten always surprises visitors by how cramped it is, but somehow it suited her.

Humanising it fell to Denis Thatcher, said Bill Deedes in a piece written for The Daily Telegraph shortly before he died. Ramsay MacDonald had loathed the place and preferred, as prime minister, to take the Northern Line every night back to his home in Hampstead.

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