Background

Ronald Millar was born on November 12, 1919 in Reading, United Kingdom. Millar was the son of a professional actress, Dorothy Dacre-Hill.

Education

Ronald Millar received his primary education at Charterhouse. She also studyed at King's College in Cambridge for a year.

Career

Sir Ronald Graeme Millar, speech writer for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had a successful career in the theater and films before turning his attention to politics in the late 1960s. He belonged to several drama groups while studying at King’s College, and enjoyed acting. His time on the stage helped him learn how to best plot plays and how to write believable dialogue.

His first play produced was Murder from Memory in 1942. This led to other successful plays, including Zero Hour and The Other Side, and an invitation from Hollywood to write film scripts. His screenplays include So Evil My Love, The Miniver Story, and Betrayed. He eventually tired of the United States and moved back to England in 1954 to adapt novels for the stage.

His writing skills came to the attention of Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher and he began helping with her speeches in the 1970s. Millar was responsible for Thatcher’s famous 1979 parliamentary address that began “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Millar also wrote one of Thatcher’s best-known lines, “The lady’s not for turning.” After Thatcher left politics Millar continued writing speeches for Prime Minister John Major. In 1993 A View from the Wings, Millar’s book chronicling his life as a writer, was published. He died on April 16, 1998 in London.

Achievements

• Ronald Millar was greatly famous as a speechwriter who provided former British Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher with some of her most memorable lines. Millar was knighted when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. It was Ronald Millar who suggested to Thatcher that she should make her dramatic recital of the words attributed to St Francis of Assisi (''Where there is discord, let us bring harmony'') just before she entered 10 Downing Street on the day in 1979 when she became Prime Minister, and he was said to have been of enormous help to her during the miners' strike and the Falklands War.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • A View from the Wings: West End, West Coast, Westminster

    ("A View from the Wings" is an inside story of the Thatche...)

    1993
  • Kut: The Death of an Army

    (Kut: The Death of an Army is the fascinating, yet largely...)

  • The Case in Question 1975
  • A Coat of Varnish 1983
  • Abelard and Heloise 1971
  • They Don't Grow on Trees 1969

Politics

Sir Ronald's friend and Times of London editor Peter Stothard called him "a very remarkable figure in British politics... He was an enormous strength to Mrs. Thatcher during the miners' strike."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Sir Ronald knew how difficult it was to turn things round to the way we wanted them to be, and he made a real difference to getting our political message across successfully.'' - Margaret Thatcher

Connections

Mother:

Dorothy Dacre-Hill