Pimlico Prime Minister

British film maker Pathé is filming in Pimlico with the help of a £1million grant from the UK Film Council (as they are soon to be abolished, presumably it will be one of their last films).  The movie will follow Britain’s first woman prime minister reflecting regretfully on her historic time leading the country. THE IRON LADY is the story of a woman who came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.

Filming is currently taking place at the end of Tachbrook Street, near the market, about 50 yards from the Westminster Conservative Club – a coincidence as Thatcher never went to the club, and filming doesn’t feature the club. Locals such as Peter Berthoud have been following the film’s progress in Pimlico. Of course she never lived in Pimlico – as Prime Minister she lived at 10 Downing St. and kept a property in Dulwich, moving shortly after her departure from power to Pimlico’s northern suburb, Eton Square in Belgravia, nevertheless as home to more MP’s mistresses than any other London borough Pimlico tends to feature in political films.




In the film, due to be released at the end of the year, Baroness Thatcher is played by Meryl Streep who has done a remarkably successful job of appearing to look like the ex-PM.

In the film the elderly former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will prepare breakfast for her husband Denis, and it is not until a personal aide bustles in that we see that Margaret sits at the table alone, Denis alive only in her imagination. Locked in the infuriating inaction of retirement and battling ill health, Margaret is ambushed by memories. Fragments of her private life and of her premiership crowd in to her mind and she relives them in vivid detail and struggles to maintain her equilibrium. The struggle, the triumphs, the betrayals – in the end, what did she achieve?

This is a film which is going to cause controversy and divide the country into supporters and opponents of the Baroness. Wasn’t it ever so? For myself – I will be glued to the screen looking out for that Pimlico News Agents!