National Review Institute

History of NRI’s Summits · 1991–1997

The Margaret Thatcher Weekends

In the years following her tenure as Prime Minister, Bill Buckley invited Margaret Thatcher to chair an annual conference, alternating between America and Europe, at which distinguished public figures, intellectuals, and younger conservatives (with the occasional formidable liberal to add spice to the argument) would hold critical debates on fundamental topics such as nations and nationalism, virtue in politics, welfare state versus welfare society, and so on. It was a little like an international version of Firing Line. Mrs. (later Baroness) Thatcher accepted this invitation and for six years these conferences were held with such participants as Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Henry Kissinger, Robert Bork, Robert Conquest, Charles Krauthammer, Mickey Kaus, John Gray, Fareed Zakaria, Roger Scruton, Theodore Dalrymple, Antonio Martino, Kate O’Beirne, George MacDonald Fraser, and many others. One participant described these weekends as “like being in a George Bernard Shaw play about a riotously intellectual country house weekend.” Many of the papers were subsequently published in National Review and elsewhere. Margaret Thatcher came back fighting and re-established herself as Britain’s dominant public figure in or out of office. The conferences were as follows: