Thatcher suit makes £25,000 in sale

A SUIT once worn by Margaret Thatcher as a government minister went under the hammer for £25,000 yesterday.

The jade-green wool suit, worn by the Iron Lady when she was education minister in the 1970s, fetched more than 16 times its £1,500 forecast at Christie’s auction house in London.

The outfit was one of seven suits worn by Baroness Thatcher among the lots sold at “The London Sale” featuring iconic items connected to the city.

A 1966 Leyland London Routemaster double-deck bus, valued at £30,000, was bought by an online bidder in South Korea for £67,250.

The bus and all but one of Lady Thatcher’s suits, went to a South Korean bidder, who, after buying five suits at £6,875 apiece, paid £13,750 for a dark-blue wool business suit worn by the former prime minister when she unveiled her bronze portrait bust in the House of Commons.

The last to go under the hammer, a jade-green wool suit in which Lady Thatcher was pictured in many photographs, was hotly contested with a buyer in the room desperately trying to outbid the South Korean.

Following some encouragement by auctioneer Nicolas Martineau, the male buyer, who declined to comment following the sale, agreed to pay £25,000.

The three-hour auction saw punters battle for an array of paintings, photographs, posters, street signs and miscellaneous memorabilia, from the city’s recent and not so recent past.

They included John Atkinson Grimshaw’s 1885 painting of Southwark Bridge and St Pauls, which went for £361,250, and iconic photographs of 1960s London by photographer Terry O’Neil, whose publicity shot of David Bowie fetched £6,250.