Mind your language
WAS MRS THATCHER to blame? I think she had a part in it.
The rot started when she (via the Queen) made her husband a baronet, and so her son a presumptive baronet. Yet she made it known that she did not wish to be known as Lady Thatcher. And she seldom has been since, for, even after she became ennobled, she has more often than not been referred to as Baroness Thatcher.
This is all wrong. It sounds like Baron Hardup in the pantomime, or a charac- ter from a novel by Anthony Hope. After all, ordinary peers in Britain are Barons, but they are referred to as Lord. So ordinary peeresses, including life peeresses, are called Lady.
Yet the Baroness plague rages on. Take Lady Blackstone, if you will. She never stops saying she likes to be called Tessa Blackstone, yet she assents to being referred to on the wireless and television as Baroness Blackstone. And then there's Lady Chalker. Someone from her office telephoned my husband the other day (not with a medical enquiry), and he took the opportunity of asking why they called her Baroness. 'We always do,' was the reply. Odd.
There is no telling the ignorance of journalists. Most cannot even rank in the correct order barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses and dukes. Few know how to style the daughter of an earl. But if Mr Major wishes to open up honours and nobility to merit, the meritocracy might at least learn how to use their new names.
Dot Wordsworth
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