The handbag that terrorised ministers: Margaret Thatcher's famous black Asprey bag up for auction with a £100,000 price tag
It was a symbol of her uncompromising style as prime minister and added a new word to the dictionary.
One of Margaret Thatcher’s handbags is expected to fetch at least £100,000 when it goes under the hammer at auction.
The black Asprey accessory was at her side during some of the most important summit meetings of the 1980s, with Reagan and Gorbachev.
History in her hands: Margaret Thatcher at the Reagan White House in 1985
It is being offered by Christie’s on June 27 in a charity sale of items donated by celebrities.
Hopes are high of raising a large sum. Last year, a half-smoked cigar abandoned by Winston Churchill in a wartime cabinet meeting sold at auction for £4,500, while this year a set of his false teeth raised £16,000.
In 2000, a black Salvatore Ferragamo bag formerly owned by the Iron Lady was sold for £82,110 at a charity auction after a bidding war involving would-be buyers from all over the world.
Handbag lady: Margaret Thatcher's infamous accessory proved a real fear factor for some ministers
The Asprey bag is expected to have a much greater perceived historical value because she used it as a receptacle for state papers.
The word ‘handbagging’ was a reference to Mrs Thatcher’s abrasive style when dealing with those who incurred her displeasure, and is often attributed to the late Tory MP Sir Julian Critchley.
It first appeared in print in 1982 when a Conservative backbencher commented: ‘She can’t look at a British institution without hitting it with her handbag.’
The late Nicholas Ridley reportedly quipped during one meeting when she had briefly left the room, leaving her bag on the table: ‘Why don’t we start? The handbag is here.’ The term ‘handbagging’ was so widely used in reference to Mrs Thatcher that it entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
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The political novelist Michael Dobbs, former Tory chief of staff, said Mrs Thatcher's handbag 'was in part a portable filing cabinet, but was also used to remind people of her power'
In 1988 Mrs Thatcher received a handbag as a gift from George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state.
He told her it was ‘to mark your ability to produce from within the right form of words to end a tedious discussion. You are the first and only recipient of the Grand Order of the Handbag’.
The political novelist Michael Dobbs, former Tory chief of staff, said her handbag ‘was in part a portable filing cabinet, but was also used to remind people of her power’.
John Whittingdale, her political secretary from 1989 to 1992, said: ‘It was a prop. She would produce it very visibly at big meetings to show she meant business.’
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