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Did Thatcher get raw deal over her Sermon on the Mound?

Twenty years on, David Torrance looks at the mostly negative reaction to the then prime minister's address.

In 1558, the Protestant reformer John Knox published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. By regiment, he meant government, and the monstrous women he had in mind were the Roman Catholic sovereigns of the day, Mary Tudor of England and Mary Stuart of Scotland. Women in authority, argued Knox, were "repugnant to nature".

When, 430 years later, Margaret Thatcher addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which Knox helped to establish, she found the trumpet still blasting. But while the Scotland of Mary, Queen of Scots' reign was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions, in 1988 it was divided along political lines – a minority who supported the Thatcherite revolution and an aggressive majority who did not.

Full story at The Scotsman.