Political Life: From Clarissa Eden to Norma Major, this is a story of how seven people who married men (and one woman) who became prime ministers of Great Britain led life behind the door of Number 10 Downing Street. It is a neat footnote to an interesting period in British history.
Democracy is very often badly served by those who are best placed to strengthen it. It is almost unbelievable to contemplate how badly the spouses and children of prime ministers have been treated once they become "the First Family". This is by no means the theme of this book, but emerges more and more strongly as it goes on.
The families, in particular the spouses, have been virtually ignored by the PM's Number 10 staff who throng the building, including the cramped private flat upstairs, at all hours of the day and night. Spouses have been pilloried by the media - getting worse and worse in recent years - without any press secretary of their own (Chris Patten called the media "sharks circling in the water" - once a vulnerability in the Majors was detected, the press behaved like sharks scenting blood). They get no allowance for clothes, for domestic staff of any kind, they have found out by accident that a government car might be available to bring them to official functions when they're going on their own. And when the end comes - usually an election defeat or sudden resignation - they are turfed out of home in a matter of hours while the new family triumphantly moves in.
Even in the years which begin this book, Clarissa Eden couldn't win. If she supported her beleaguered husband - ill and coping badly with the Suez crisis - she was accused of "egging him on", while her own view was that she was "bolstering him up, without any political motive". Clarissa only had 18 months as prime minister's spouse . She was one of the spouses with her own money, and the Edens were able to pay for staff for domestic and secretarial services. But she drove herself - complete in tiara and evening dress - to embassy functions in her own little car (on one occasion finding it pushed down the road out of the way of the grand official cars) before she discovered some use of an official car was available.
Dorothy, a daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, married Harold McMillan (her father privately expostulated "God, trade again! - but I suppose books are better than beer") and didn't move into Number 10 until she was 57. She brought her own staff to Downing Street and filled the house with grandchildren. Press intrusions were minimal in those halcyon days, and Dorothy was fierce about keeping it that way. A strong, warm-hearted and independent-minded woman, she was adored by her husband who was severely bruised by her long relationship with Robert Boothby. But she was always the loyal and very hard-working political spouse. Her successor, Elizabeth Home, was out of the same sort of stable at a time when Britain "had lost an empire but still not found a role".
Fast forward to the last four incumbents of these inhospitable rooms in this book - the accommodation described by Mary Wilson as "a flat in a very big office building". Both Mary Wilson and Audrey Callaghan presided with their husbands over the long, slow, crisis-ridden decline of "old Labour" and made the best they could of having to live in the goldfish bowl. As the book progresses, the wonder grows: why on earth do they do it? Why do people live over the shop in this way? The existence of Chequers for weekends is part of the explanation - though the Edens and McMillans obviously thought it was a little common compared to their stately homes. As for Denis Thatcher - not a new man by any standards - he got away from Number 10 as much as he could, and never so much as boiled an egg. Mrs T insisted on Marks and Spencer frozen meals or her own minor cooking, despite their personal wealth.
Norma Major tried to divide her time between home in Huntingdon and officialdom in Downing Street. A more substantial figure than she was often portrayed, she achieved some secretarial support for PMs' spouses, hated the invasion of privacy, wrote two books, improved the apartments, threw the house open to charities and was resolutely loyal. When, some years later, the truth burst on the world of John Major's affair with Edwina Currie, she behaved with great dignity - "long over, long forgiven".
Since 1997, the sharks have sharpened their teeth even more on the goldfish bowl. Cherie Booth will have a great chapter to add.
The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister 1955-1997, By Cherie Booth and Cate Haste, Chatto & Windus, 321pp. £18.99.
Gemma Hussey is director of the European Women's Foundation (organising democracy training courses for women in eastern Europe). She is a former minister for education.