Naomi Grimley interviewing Janice Richards
20/3/2015
Naomi Grimley (NG): Well I'm very pleased to be joined by Janice Richards, who
worked in No 10 from 1971 to 1999 - that's over 28 years. Thanks for joining us
Janice.
Janice Richards (JR): Thank you for asking me Naomi.
NG: Just explain what the ‘Garden Room Girls’ are, because for many people
who've never heard of them, they won't really be clear what they did.
JR: No. Very little has been written about them actually, but we used to class
ourselves a bit like the ‘Windmill Girls’, that we never closed because we were
always here, always everywhere. And the secretariat I believe was set up at the
end of the First World War and has carried on since. We actually took over the
rooms downstairs overlooking the garden, I think just after the Second World
War, because those two rooms were inhabited by Winston Churchill. It was, I
think, his sitting room and his dining room during the war. So I'm not quite clear
when we took those rooms over. It was Churchill, in fact, who got us the name as
the ‘Garden Room Girls’ because he used to request ‘Please send up a garden girl’,
so that was how that started I think. But basically there were 12 of us when I
started and we just performed normal secretarial duties, but for the prime
minister and his private office, nobody else. We went everywhere with the prime
minister, it didn't matter where he was or she was and it was an exciting time,
and I think on the whole the garden rooms was rather the hub of Downing Street,
because we actually kept a lot of things together I think.
NG: Yes you have tremendous proximity to a prime minister because you've got
to be with them all the time, particularly, as you mentioned, when they're
travelling.
JR: Exactly. And, of course, in those days we didn't have mobile phones and
wonderful communications like, you know, there is today. So they had to rely on
us to get to our destination and then ring and say ‘We're here’, and then we
would pass on any messages and obviously be ready there and then to set up
offices and speak to the prime minister when we had to.
NG: Now when we were talking about prime ministers you said ‘He’
instinctively...
JR: I did.
NG: But of course you did work for Margaret Thatcher. Can you describe the day
that she first walked inside No 10, because you must have been here at that
time?
JR: I was here, yes, and we were standing in the hallway as we always do to clap
the new prime minister in. Times had been a bit flat in the years before. The
Wilson second administration, it didn't really seem that things were moving
along very quickly. James Callaghan, when he came in, was very calm, very
experienced and the place on the whole was a little flat. But I can honestly say
that the day Margaret Thatcher walked in it was just alive. It was abuzz. And we
all thought that this was the start of something big, actually, and we weren't
wrong.
NG: Did she have a stature then when she came in?
JR: Absolutely.
NG: Because her image did evolve over time, but you did feel it was the start of
something special.
JR: Straight away. Absolutely. I mean her presence just walking in a room, not
subsequently, but actually on that very first day. We were, I think, excited by
what was to come and that sort of buzz and enthusiasm didn't leave the building
at all, all the while she was here. It was a great family atmosphere all the while
she was here.
NG: Do you think, though, that the civil service structure had to get to grips with
having a woman at the helm? I mean it must have been quite a male-dominated
place in those days.
JR: Yes I think it did. I mean, prime ministers when they come in, they assume
that they can do lots of things, and then the civil service says, ‘Well, I'm sorry,
you can't do that, it's not in civil service rules’. So with Margaret Thatcher I think
she wasn't quite so demanding, I think, as the men had been before in what she
might have required, but I know that the secretary of the cabinet had to, sort of,
deal quite firmly, I think, with what she wanted and what she thought she was
going to have here.
NG: What was she like behind the scenes, because obviously there is a lot of
pressure on prime ministers, tempers might get frayed… how did she deal with
the pressure of being at the top?
JR: Well when we were with her at Chequers or Scotney or wherever, I never
once saw her lose her temper. She was firm, very firm, but she just dealt with
everything so expertly in a way, it was amazing just to watch how capable she
was.
NG: You mentioned travel. Can you tell us where you followed her to, where in
the world did you go? Who were the kind of guests that came to No 10 as well to
visit her?
JR: Well Gorbachev came here of course, and Reagan, and the Cold War period
was an amazing time here. We were all very enthused by what was going on then.
Lots of heads of state have been here - I mean forgive me but I can't actually
recollect who came in her era and who came before or after - but we did meet all
the heads of state, either in their own countries or here, at various functions that
were given. It was her presence that stood out actually, even when she was with
others like Reagan. Her presence was predominantly the one that you looked at,
it was strange.
NG: Could you see the definite chemistry between Reagan and herself?
JR: Absolutely. And I think he was in awe of her actually. You could see he was
listening on her every word and yeah, it was quite unique I think.
NG: I mentioned travel. Any trips that stand out for you or, even if they were in
Britain rather than abroad?
JR: Well we went to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Lusaka,
and we'd had awful stories about mad dogs and terrible accommodation and,
you know, we were trying to not go on the trip, we were trying to get rid of it to
another colleague or something, but it turned out when we got there that in fact
our accommodation was beautiful. We had a lovely, a lovely house and poor Mrs
Thatcher and all the other heads of the Commonwealth were in rather substandard little bungalows on a complex and there were lots of leaking roofs and
things like that, so she actually would come over to us and spend some time with
us because it wasn't very nice accommodation at all, so that stood out. We didn't
always see a great deal of her. India, we were two weeks in New Delhi, and we
didn't see a great deal of her there, but it was a wonderful country to have visited,
but I can't actually say a lot of what she did on that trip I'm afraid.
NG: What did you have to take with you on a trip? Did you take the typewriter
or…
JR: No we didn't. We didn't have to do that. The duty clerks looked after all the
paper work. We just had to set up office while we were there and be prepared.
The foreign embassies or high commissions actually gave us all the equipment
we needed, there and then, so we didn't actually have to take things with us, but
they were long hours and needless to say, you had to set up the office and then
you pack up after everybody's gone to bed, and you have to be there again the
next morning and in some cases, I mean my last trip in 1985, we went to, I think,
five countries in as many days, and that was hard work, just stopping and
starting and not getting sleep. So that was our job basically, to just be on hand at
all times to do whatever was necessary.
NG: Let's talk about some of the big events during the Thatcher period.
Obviously one that really stands out is the Brighton bombing.
JR: Yes.
NG: What's your recollection of that?
JR: Well my recollection was that of course we were all very shocked about it.
One of my staff, Sally, was the one on duty in Brighton at the time, and I'm sure
she won't mind me saying that it took her quite a long time to get over that. Mrs
Thatcher pretty much, when she got back from the party conference, was normal,
as if nothing had happened at all. But that was how she was. I mean she just
carried on regardless. She wasn't easily fazed. I don't think she was easily
embarrassed about anything either. So it was a tough time for her but she got
over it remarkably well. But it was a sad time for us too because we knew some
of the people who had been killed or injured in that time. And as we're talking
about the IRA, the other two people that were killed during her time, Airey
Neave and Ian Gow, Ian Gow we knew very well here too so that was a great
shock to us and to her.
NG: And presumably security in No 10 tightened immeasurably afterwards.
JR: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the gates were put up of course. But the post,
all the post that came in went through security clearance which it hadn't done
before, because we had to open all the post, and yes things got a lot tighter, and
yeah, we had to make sure things were where they should be and people were
watching out for everything.
NG: Another period of course that stands out during Mrs Thatcher's period is the
Falklands War. Tell me about what it was like working in No 10 while the war
was going on.
JR: I think it was difficult for us in a way because there was such a lot of work
involved behind the scenes with that. I think we actually had to work through the
night and everything while that was going on. It was a very worrying time, I
know, for her. She was concerned about it especially, I know, when she actually
had to make the decision to send the troops down and, you know, that sort of
thing, but there again it was jubilation and euphoria when, you know, we won,
and we got the Falklands back, and the place was buzzing again after having a
period of, you know, being very serious.
NG: And of course her popularity does have a bounce...
JR: Absolutely. It bounced right up and the actual postbag went way up high.
Flowers everywhere.
NG: Fan mail?
JR: Fan mail. Lots of fan mail saying, you know, well done and yes, absolutely.
NG: It can't have all been fan mail, given that she was a sort of Marmite politician
I guess you either loved her or you hated her, and you were in charge of the
correspondence unit as well. Tell us about some of the things you used to get
through the post for the prime minister.
JR: Well people were very generous to her and they'd send lots of little knitted
things that they had done, lots and lots of gifts came through the post. She was
very generous, in as much as obviously she couldn't keep them all. And we used
to actually have an auction once a year, which I used to be the auctioneer at, and
she allowed us to actually auction the items off. We'd make quite a lot of money.
Nobody was allowed to get rid of the gifts when they got them home, they had to
stay in the family at some stage, and then all the proceeds went to her favourite
charity which was the NSPCC, so we did that every year for her, but she was
extremely generous. The mailbag on the whole, I think, because she was a
woman prime minister, people used to think she could get things done better
than a male head. So I think that's why the mail, when she first came to office was
about 3,000 letters a week. By the time she left it had gone up to 30,000 letters a
week; that's how much it went up. So people thought they might get things done
better with her. On the whole there wasn't a lot of abusive letters for her.
Obviously you got the odd one or two, but mainly it was people with hardship
problems and that sort of thing which, you know, we dealt with in any other
way.
NG: And of course children also often send things to prime ministers, as well...
JR: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we used to select those things which we thought
she'd like to see. You didn't have to be important people. Anybody who had a real
situation at home which we thought she might like to know about, then we
would make sure that the private office saw those letters and passed to her if
necessary. We had to be very careful that we didn't let letters slip by that came in
that could have caused a lot of adverse publicity for her.
NG: What about the miners' strike, do you remember anything about that period,
because of course that was the period when her divisiveness came to the
surface…
JR: Yes, I do. Well for a start my husband was in the police and he was on the
miners' strike, so I got quite first-hand from what was going on on the picketlines et cetera from him. But she was very determined during that time, and of
course she was very well-prepared for the miners' strike and we knew that she
had been ensuring that stocks of coal were high. But it was a long, long time and
it went on for a long time but I think we all knew that in the end she wasn't going
to back down and at some stage she would win the battle. And she did of course,
and I think it probably changed the country more than anything that strike, and
the outcome of it.
NG: Let's fast-forward to the end of her time, because that must have been a very
dramatic period - Geoffrey Howe's resignation and, I think, the sense of cabinet
ministers deserting her. What do you remember from being below stairs, as it
were, about what was going on?
JR: Well we - because there was 11 and a half years of her time here - we were a
very tight unit. Not just the civil servants, but her political staff as well and her
security people, her bodyguards, we were all very close in one way or another.
And although we knew what was going on we didn't for one minute think that
this was the end. And it was a terrible shock to us all, because we had been a big
family for such a long time, and she just really seemed that she was going to be
the person who was going to be here for a lot longer. There was an awful lot
going on leading up to her resignation which we knew was going to end badly for
her and of course we couldn't say anything, but when the actual resignation
announcement did come, we were all shocked, absolutely shocked. And the
whole...
NG: So even up until that moment you didn't...
JR: Until that moment. Until that morning that she'd come down to the cabinet
and made the announcement, we didn't actually know and expect her to go
actually.
NG: But you must have had a sense from the headlines, Michael Heseltine
obviously challenging her...
JR: Yes we did, but, you know, Heseltine had been challenging her before and
she'd won through so we didn't actually think, we thought there were enough
people around her to keep her in office. But, as I said, it was really a big shock to
us all when she went. We didn't actually think it would come to that in the end.
We thought she would win through. But of course when she decided not to go to
the second ballot, that was it as far as we were concerned. But it wasn't until that
morning that we were all absolutely certain. And the whole place was stunned.
People were just walking around, upset and yeah, not a good time.
NG: There is that very famous footage of her leaving Downing Street and as she
gets into the car, the flashlights of the cameras light up, and you can see tears in
her eyes. Do you remember that? Do you remember the sequence before she gets
out of the door?
JR: I do, absolutely, because there were lots of people who were in tears. The
whole of the office was in the front hall. She was very good because she stopped,
you know, for a time with certain people. And she actually stopped with me for a
little while, which was very nice of her. But we were sad, really really sad, and we
thought probably we weren't going to pick up for a few months or longer even.
NG: Tell us a bit more about the day-to-day business of being a ‘Garden Room
Girl’ downstairs. I'm still fascinated by the technology. In those days it must have
been a bit clunky compared to what we're used to now.
JR: When I first came here I was expecting electric typewriters because I had one
in my last department. And they were using Imperial 66’s here and I couldn't
believe it because it is a real sort of plod, and what have you, but anyway, that
was beside, we obviously got better equipment after that, but it wasn't actually
well into the 80’s that we actually got a computer, or printers. So everything had
to have a carbon copy. Printers of course failed at the last minute when we did
have them and half an hour before a speech, for instance, the machine would
break down and so we were all on our hands and knees trying to collate papers
and things like that. But we were quite behind everybody else in technology here
for a while. And as I said, you know, the actual phones that we used, when they
eventually did come through, were still quite old-fashioned and antiquated
compared with what other people might have had.
NG: And there must have been a camaraderie amongst all of you because you're
in this very tight-knit unit. I mean presumably some of you stayed friends for
life?
JR: Oh we have, and we try and have a reunion even now. But the camaraderie
was wonderful. With so many women together you might expect, you know, a
few problems, but I can honestly say that we were such a close unit, we got on so
well, and there was very little change in the staff. If you did leave, sorry, if you
did become pregnant then you left, you didn't come back, but I actually
introduced part-time working so that mothers could come back, and they shared
the job with another, and that worked quite well. But it was always very happy,
always happy. We had some wonderful times together. Sad and happy but on the
whole we were a good unit, and you know, I'm sure they still are a good unit,
although diminished now.
NG: Was it working shifts? And did you have to work through the night or did it
tend to be day shifts?
JR: No, no. The twelve of us did shift works, shift work, so we could work
weekends on a Friday right through until Monday, whether we were in London
or Chequers. On trips abroad, of course, there might be one, two or three of us
depending on the length of it and seriousness of it really. We had a few day
people that came in but on the whole it was either a late shift, a night shift or a
weekend. And, you know, luckily we probably got to bed midnight, two o'clock,
something like that and then we'd be up for the office in the morning, for the first
call, seven o'clock or something like that. It varied of course. Sometimes we
didn't get to bed at all. But we were always on hand.
NG: Did you ever have to wake a prime minister or was that something that the
duty clerks tended to do?
JR: Duty clerks on the whole did that but, of course, if we were anywhere away
with them, then it would be one of us, in this country anyway. The duty clerks
didn't travel in this country. So it would be up to us to disturb them or go and
give them some news.
NG: Yeah. Just tell me a bit about Chequers, because that's a place that the British
public don't really have much sense of. It's hidden away literally behind a row of
trees in Buckinghamshire isn't it?
JR: It is, it is.
NG: Tell me a bit about what it's like to work there.
JR: It's a beautiful, beautiful place. Mrs Thatcher loved it, really loved it, and she
would spend most weekends there. I think she was relaxed there. She spent a lot
of the time in the study, as she did here because she had an insatiable appetite
for work, as we all know. I mean the fact that the workload went up about
tenfold with her meant that she was actually making more work. I mean she
would have paper all day if she could and all night, I mean she didn't put her
boxes down until she'd finished them. And you just got the impression that she
would rather work than relax, that was how she was. You couldn't see her
relaxing, she didn't have, didn't have hobbies like some of the other prime
ministers, you know. So she needed work, she really needed work.
NG: Did she display sense of humour or was it all about work really?
JR: Oh no, no, she had a sense of humour. She was quite motherly and used to call
me ‘dear’, and I think probably a lot of my colleagues ‘dear’ as well, but no, we'd
talk about clothes and she was kind, she'd remark on what you were wearing:
‘That's very nice dear, nice colour for you’, and that sort of thing. So, oh no, you
could have a really relaxed conversation with her. But it was never a
conversation about work as such, with her.
NG: Do you think she was very conscious of her image? Historians now looking
back say she was very clever actually, before the days of Tony Blair, she was
actually very good herself at cultivating an image for the modern media, cradling
a calf in her hands as she was about to do a photo opportunity with the media.
What did you sort of sense from that?
JR: I don't know. I mean she always wanted to look immaculate obviously. But I
don't, I don't think she was, I don't think she needed to be complimented in that
respect, in that way, and I think she always knew she looked good. But I don't
think she needed to try to find things that would improve her image, I just don't
think that was, you know, in her mind at all. It didn't feel like that.
NG: But she was conscious of the media and its growing importance.
JR: Yes, oh yes of course, yes. Yeah. But I don't, I really don't think she was
influenced by it.
NG: I'm going to have to ask you about Denis. Was he around the place, or
playing golf or…
JR: He was playing golf a lot. But he was always a real gentleman. He was just
wonderful. He would come in late at night, he'd totter in as they say, but he'd
always, you know, if he'd had his hat on he'd doff his cap and, you know, ‘Good
evening, how are you?’ and that sort of thing. Always very, very pleasant to any
member of staff here. And we always marvelled actually how he stayed in the
background but yet was at the fore. I mean the press were very kind to him, they
could have actually been quite nasty to him I think, but they were very kind to
Denis and we liked him very much. And we knew that she relied on him very
heavily to just be her listening post all the time obviously, as you would expect
him to be.
NG: What about Christmas at No 10, can you tell us any stories about what it was
like? Did the Thatchers throw you a party?
JR: Yes, we had a party here and we had carols and she would get everybody
involved and she would, you know, gather people up and say, ‘Now come on,
you've got to be singing’, and so we'd sing carols and we'd have a good time,
really nice time. It was a wonderful, wonderful time to be here, in the eighties. I
don't think there's been a time before or since where, you know, we had such a
presence here, actually. It was certainly my best years.
NG: And of course, in a way, parliament - even though Margaret Thatcher had
large majorities - it was more important then in terms of, you know, the media
took more attention of parliament and there were late night votes. It must have
been quite dramatic, a sense of the prime minister going off to vote of an evening,
that kind of thing. Do you remember any stories around what went on over there,
as it were, down the road?
JR: Well, there again, when we went over to the House of Commons, we didn't,
we didn't actually know what was going on too much, we were just in a room,
our room over there. But there was lots of hustle and bustle and people going in
and out and especially, you know, when there was a vote going on you would see
some of her close colleagues, you know, gathering round and talking and all that
sort of thing, so we knew there was, there was a lot of, you know, hubbub, which
was exciting too.
NG: I'm just trying to think what else we can ask you. What about the gifts that
prime ministers got from foreign leaders? We were talking earlier about
Gorbachev coming, Reagan coming. It is the tradition isn't it on state visits to
hand something over?
JR: Yes it is. We were always quite frugal in what we gave to heads of state. We
didn't have a huge budget and we relied on the Foreign Office quite heavily to
actually give us a guidance as to what we might give to that head of state. I
remember once, in fact I read this quite recently, that I was in charge of the gifts
and the Foreign Office had suggested that we give Gorbachev some hairbrushes,
some silver-backed hairbrushes. And I can remember saying to the private office,
‘You can't give him these brushes, he hasn't any hair’. And they said, ‘Oh, you
know, that'll be alright’. I mean, I don't know which private secretary it was now,
but I read the other day that in fact - and if this is true I'm sure it is - that she
asked to see the gift when she was in Russia, and was told, you know, was given
these brushes, and she said, ‘But he's bald. You can't possibly...’ And so a
messenger had to be sent back here to pick up another gift. But I'd actually said
in the first place that, you know, ‘No, this isn't good.’ But they still went out there.
NG: They should have listened to you, shouldn't they.
JR: But as far as gifts to her were concerned, obviously being a woman it was
easier to find a gift for a woman, and we got lots of handbags and things like that
coming through the post. Lots of nice brooches and that sort of thing. But heads
of state, it was rather serious in as much as when we went to the Middle East
they would give her jewellery that was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
And I can't quite recall but the allowance, that you were allowed, you were
allowed to have a gift if it was up to a certain allowance and I think in those days
it was about 50 pounds or something, so it would have meant that if Mrs
Thatcher had wanted to keep these, she would have had to pay, you know,
99,000 pounds or something for them. So in the end we had to try and persuade
the states not to give expensive presents because they just, you know, we
couldn't wear them, the insurance would have been extremely high. Having said
that, Mrs Thatcher did wear one set of diamond and emerald pearls, emerald
jewellery, in one event, and such was this jewellery that when she came back,
two or three of the stones were missing, so although there was lots of lovely,
wonderful jewellery, and lots of expensive gems, they weren't set in very well. So
they never were worn. But she was never, she was never greedy, there wasn't
any greed in Mrs Thatcher at all, and that's something that I noticed more when,
there were different, you know new incumbents, but anyway, that's beside the
point. But, you know, she, there was all this jewellery coming in, and it just, you
know, it just sat here, but it was for the future prime ministers or their spouses
to wear if they wanted to, and they were kept here in a safe in No 10.
NG: You mention jewels, so word association, I guess, means I have to ask you
about Buckingham Palace. Did you have much dealings, many dealings with the
palace? Presumably messages had to go back and forth because of the way that
our constitution works.
JR: We didn't, we didn't get involved in that at all.
NG: But she of course went for her weekly...
JR: With her, yes, exactly.
NG: Yes.
JR: That wasn't anything we got involved with at all.
JR: Yes, I mean just one little thing we didn't touch on, and I'm sure you've had
this before, with one of my colleagues, but when Mrs Thatcher gave her
resignation, handed her resignation in, the postbag just was huge, I mean we had
sacks and sacks of post and the flowers in No 10, it was amazing. There were just
flowers everywhere, people just so sad that she was going. And she actually came
down, and we were all sat on the floor trying to open, the whole office was trying
to open these, these sacks of mail, and she was just, you know, flicking through
them, and we were just hoping that she wasn't going to pick one up that, you
know, said, you know, well, ‘Jolly good, I'm glad you're going’, you know. And she
didn't. In fact there was one from a little boy there and he'd said, ‘Oh’, you know,
‘We're so sorry you're going prime minister’, and ‘good luck’, and ‘kiss kiss kiss
kiss’ on the bottom. But, you know, for an hour she was just on the floor with us,
very casual, very nice, and she was always very pleasant to us, you know, she'd
invite us, if she was having, you know, a state reception here or something, or
even trooping the colour, then, you know, she would invite one of us, or two of us,
to join, join in that.
NG: It is very brutal the way that the British system can eject a prime minister
from office. I mean, within hours presumably the Majors had arrived.
JR: Oh yes. Absolutely. I mean that's a difficulty. You know, you're clapping
someone out very sadly and then you're clapping someone in. John Major, you
know, actually he filled a gap we didn't think was going to be filled, for some
considerable time. So that was good. But it is difficult. I mean they have to go so
quickly, you know, there's no, it's not like the American president where he gets
a few months to sort himself out and, you know, get himself together, I mean it is
brutal. I wish there was a nicer way of doing it actually, but, you know, she
handled it well. At least she knew she didn't have to wait for an election to know
that she was going, having to go.
NG: Did you get a sense at the end of her time that she was getting tired? I mean
it's a long time to be prime minister, living at this high-octane level.
JR: No. I think she'd have gone on and on and on if she could have done. It was, as
I said, she just, she just loved the work. I mean, you, you felt that there wasn't
anything more important than looking after this country. You really felt that that
was what she wanted to do. She was destined to do it and was going to do it,
come hell or high water. And I think all the while she was here she thought she
was doing that job as best as she could and as well as anyone could. And that's
why I think probably it was just so disappointing and hurtful for her, when
people decided that no, she wasn't going to do it any more.
NG: You described her as a boss as a very courteous person and obviously very
nice to you and the other Garden Room Girls, but she must have been a
nightmare in some ways for her colleagues to work with because she was so very
strong-minded?
JR: I think so. I mean I think that that was possibly the problem. She was so
dominant in how she wanted to do things and she felt her way was the best and I
think probably difficult for others to try and change her mind about things, so, I
know there were lots of difficult situations and I think because of that, because of
the way she felt she was right all the time, I think that was probably her undoing
and people felt that, you know, she wasn't listening to other people's views.
NG: I've got to ask you what it is like walking in here, all these years after your
time here. I know you've been back for occasional do’s...
JR: Yes.
NG: But does it look different, I mean it had a… the walls were different colours
weren't they, I think?
JR: Oh they were, yes, we had yellow stripe in the hall for quite some time. The
building was quite drab when I arrived, I mean there wasn't anything very
exciting here. And I think it had to have a woman's touch to brighten things up
and she did brighten things up. I know that her, she spent a lot of time in the
study here and she had that done to her own liking, and I think she paid for that
herself actually. And of course all the state rooms and everything were
brightened up and the walls looked brighter and the paintings were changed and
yes, it was a nicer, lighter place to work. The atmosphere was just much better, in
any way really.
NG: We mentioned earlier the Cold War and I should perhaps ask you about the
fall of the Berlin Wall and you know, Margaret Thatcher's part in that. It was a
very different time, wasn't it, from the one we're living through now?
JR: Oh gosh, it was, yes. But, you know, although we obviously have to type
everything that goes on, about every subject there is, and we get to hear and see
things which are remarkable, it is very easy actually, it is very difficult I should
say, to actually recall some of those things that you type, you know, because it's
just, it's just another piece of paper if you like. I know the Cold War was
exceptional and, but I honestly can say that it didn't actually affect me greatly.
NG: No. But is there a letter or something you typed that you thought, not
necessarily to do with the Cold War but anything else, where you thought, ‘My
goodness, this is a piece of history’?
JR: I think, I think probably the last thing that I typed, pretty much the last thing I
typed before she resigned, is something I won't forget. And something I can't
divulge. But it was, that was very much in my mind, about the things that were
going on here, leading up to that resignation.
NG: Alright, so it's going to stay with you?
JR: It is.
NG: Thank you, Janice Richards, very much.
JR: Thank you Naomi, thank you very much.