Lady Thatcher Returns to Williamsburg
The College's official portrait of Margaret Thatcher, which spent about a year as part of a tour of portrait artwork, has finally returned to the Wren Building as of last December. I apologize for the poor quality of the image; the photo I snapped was too large a file to upload, and this was the best I could find on the web. The good news is that she still gets pride of place in the illustrious Blue Room, where she will continue to breathe down the necks of nervous graduate students defending their theses in this room for generations to come.
The portrait, which was painted by Nelson Shanks specifically for the room depicted, is in commemoration of of the Iron Lady's tenure from 1993 to 2000 as Chancellor of the College, a largely honorific post which is retained from the colonial period largely for ceremonial purposes. She succeeded Chief Justice Warren Burger, and was succeeded by Henry Kissinger and Sandra Day O'Connor, who will step down and be replaced by Robert Gates this coming February.
Lady Thatcher was the first British subject to hold the post since Richard Terrick, the Bishop of London, was removed in 1776. The position originally existed so that the College would have an official representative to the crown resident in England. Her investiture speech, which was delivered on Charter Day of 1994, is available here.
The Thatcher portrait is probably my favorite painting in the Wren, although the Sir Godfrey Kneller portrait of Queen Anne in the Great Hall would have to be a close second.
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