Sowing the seeds of fear and greed

ONE of the most memorable assessments of Margaret Thatcher was delivered by French president François Mitterrand when he declared: “She has the eyes of Stalin and the voice of Marilyn Monroe.”

It summed up the extreme responses she would illicit and the divisiveness of her character.

Like everything about the woman, even that famous quote is a matter of dispute, with Mitterrand’s aide Jacques Attali dismissing claims the president had compared her eyes to Caligula’s, not Stalin’s.