Doodles sketched by Ronald Reagan at the 1981 Ottawa G7 summit, and then kept by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, have been released.
Mrs Thatcher sat next to Mr Reagan at the summit and noticed him sketching, according to a historian who has examined the files.
She is thought to have picked up the Republican leader’s sheet of drawings during a break in proceedings in Canada and preserved them for posterity among her private papers.
The doodles are among private papers from 1981 belonging to Mrs Thatcher being released by archivists who have catalogued the former Conservative leader’s files.
Records show that Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan were joined at the “group of seven” (G7) summit by Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, French president Francois Mitterrand, west German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Italian president Giovanni Spadolini and Japanese prime minister Zenko Suzuki.
Mr Reagan, president between 1981 and 1989, drew seven sketches: five heads, a man’s torso and an eye.
But Mr Reagan, who died in 2004 aged 93, gave no clue about the identity of his subjects and did not sign the paper, although Mrs Thatcher wrote “Ronald Reagan’s ‘doodling’ at the Ottawa Conference” in the bottom right-hand corner of the sheet.
Chris Collins, a historian who works for the private-funded Margaret Thatcher Foundation, said he recalled the former Conservative leader talking about Mr Reagan’s doodling.
“She was sitting next to him,” said Mr Collins. “She had seen him doing it during the meeting. He just left it on his desk.
He thought it was of no value whatsoever and left. She thought it was rather fun and picked it up.”
Mr Collins said Mrs Thatcher, prime minister between 1979 and 1990 and now 86, kept the doodles amongst personal papers at her flat in Downing Street.
Mrs Thatcher agreed to her personal papers being housed at Churchill College, Cambridge nearly a decade ago and documents relating to earlier years have already been released.
Her 1981 personal papers are being released by Cambridge University and the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust nearly three months after official record keepers made 1981 government files available.
Archivists say from next week personal files from 1981 will be opened to the public at the Churchill Archive Centre.
PA