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REUTERS/KIERNAN DOHERTY

REUTERS/KIERNAN DOHERTY

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher joins Vera Lynn at a reception celebrating Lynn’s 90th birthday at the Imperial War Museum this spring.[/caption]

A British Heritage Commonplace Book


In which we reflect on themes introduced in these pages

We have fed our seas for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there’s never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed’s unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of the admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ paid in full!

Rudyard Kipling “The Song of the Dead”

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

It is only when you look now and see success that you say that it was good fortune. It was not. We lost 250 of our best young men. I felt every one.

I just owe almost everything to my father, and it’s passionately interesting for me that the things I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames, they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Margaret Thatcher

There’ll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow
Just you wait and see.

There’ll be joy and laughter
And peace ever after,
Tomorrow
When the world is free

“The White Cliffs of Dover”

We’ll meet again.
Don’t know where
Don’t know when,
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day
Keep smilin’ through
Just like you always do
Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

“We’ll Meet Again”