The whole of the situation of the Conservative Party today springs from that night when they dismissed the best prime minister the country had had since Churchill.

They married on 13 December 1951 at Wesley's Chapel in City Road London: the Roberts were Methodists. When Thatcher returned to England after being demobilised in 1946 his wife told him Denis Thatcher had met someone else and wanted a divorce. The letters portrayed Denis Thatcher as a reactionary interested only in golf and gin.

He was born in Lewisham London the elder child of a New Zealand-born British businessman Thomas Herbert (Jack) Thatcher. As of 2012 he is the most recent person outside the Royal Family to be awarded an hereditary title which he was awarded in 1991.