Margaret Thatcher Archive reveals former prime minister's own War of the Roses

Margaret Thatcher accidentally gave permission to two separate rose growers to name flowers after her

An emotional Margaret Thatcher at the 1984 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton on the day after the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel (Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A bulging file of 45 documents held in the Thatcher Archive tells the extraordinary tale of the 1984 war of the name of the rose.

The then Prime Minister was “delighted” when a German rose grower, who had developed a new breed of rose that was “robust, stands on strong stems, will withstand all weather, and is very long lasting” requested her permission to name it the Margaret Thatcher Rose. Permission was granted.

She had forgotten that when she was opposition leader, in 1978, she had allowed a Japanese company who had developed a “simply lovely” pink flower to call that the Margaret Thatcher Rose.

It was a breach of registration procedures for two roses to have the same name. The aggrieved Japanese complained to Downing Street, and threatened legal action.

A Downing Street press officer suggested they get round the problem by declaring that they were actually one and the same rose, but Mrs Thatcher scribbled on his memo “I don’t think they are the same.”

The controversy generated a succession of humourless inter-departmental memos, none of which indulged in any jokes about it being a ‘thorny’ question, or whether a Margaret Thatcher rose would smell as sweet by any other name. A young diplomat named Peter Ricketts was put on the case. He is now Ambassador to France. Eventually, the Japanese grower was sent a tactful letter praising the “masterpiece” that was the original Margaret Thatcher Rose, and the matter was quietly dropped.