LONDON, Aug. 25 -- The daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain's "Iron Lady" is suffering from dementia, the family's first public confirmation of what has been widely rumored in Britain for several years.Thatcher's condition has deteriorated so much that she forgets that her husband, Denis Thatcher, died in 2003, her daughter said in a memoir that is to be published next month and was serialized over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday newspaper."I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again," Carol Thatcher wrote. "Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh' as I struggled to compose myself. 'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly."Thatcher said she first noticed her mother's failing memory over lunch in 2000, a decade after she left 10 Downing Street after leading Britain from 1979 to 1990."I almost fell off my chair," wrote Thatcher, a journalist and television personality. "Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it. She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100 per cent cast-iron damage-proof. From the fateful day of our lunch, tell-tale signs that something wasn't quite right began to emerge."
LONDON, Aug. 25 -- The daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain's "Iron Lady" is suffering from dementia, the family's first public confirmation of what has been widely rumored in Britain for several years.
Thatcher's condition has deteriorated so much that she forgets that her husband, Denis Thatcher, died in 2003, her daughter said in a memoir that is to be published next month and was serialized over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again," Carol Thatcher wrote. "Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh' as I struggled to compose myself. 'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly."
Thatcher said she first noticed her mother's failing memory over lunch in 2000, a decade after she left 10 Downing Street after leading Britain from 1979 to 1990.
"I almost fell off my chair," wrote Thatcher, a journalist and television personality. "Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it. She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100 per cent cast-iron damage-proof. From the fateful day of our lunch, tell-tale signs that something wasn't quite right began to emerge."
"I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years" "You know I've been mad, I've always been mad"
I do not wish to mock senitle dementia, or those who suffer from it. I'm sure it's a fear that lurks in us all, but Thatcher was callous and wicked long before she lost it.
She did a few good things that even I'd concede, but the Falklands victory caused her to lose her grip on reality and the country suffered, and still suffers, from the consequences. keep to the Fen Causeway
