Always interesting to read these chats between world leaders. If anything for more to see the, at the risk of using a buzz word, performative nature of them.
By this I mean that Thatcher leaves a massive conservational lay-up of:
‘I have yet to find a new home in London.’
And he doesn’t reply ‘How so?’ or similar. You realise the caller is provided with cue cards for whoever they are speaking to and they rattle through them as quickly as politeness allows. The inference being that accords are held more by the deals that underpin them than the relationships that decorate them.
(Oh, no I’ve succumbed to Chat and treating Substack like Twitter - my old addiction - so I will have to delete the Substack app now. And I already did that as soon as they introduced Chat but my subscriptions all disappeared too, nothing new arrived in my email. So I came back. Succumbed. Woe.)
Fascinating piece, though, Henry. As ever. Thank you.
Always interesting to read these chats between world leaders. If anything for more to see the, at the risk of using a buzz word, performative nature of them.
By this I mean that Thatcher leaves a massive conservational lay-up of:
‘I have yet to find a new home in London.’
And he doesn’t reply ‘How so?’ or similar. You realise the caller is provided with cue cards for whoever they are speaking to and they rattle through them as quickly as politeness allows. The inference being that accords are held more by the deals that underpin them than the relationships that decorate them.
Mark Thatcher’s footwear!
(Oh, no I’ve succumbed to Chat and treating Substack like Twitter - my old addiction - so I will have to delete the Substack app now. And I already did that as soon as they introduced Chat but my subscriptions all disappeared too, nothing new arrived in my email. So I came back. Succumbed. Woe.)
Fascinating piece, though, Henry. As ever. Thank you.