Number 10's 250th Anniversary: 1985
Number 10 became 250 years old in 1985. To celebrate, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher hosted a grand dinner at Number 10 in the State Dining Room for her living predecessors—Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, and James Callaghan—and Elizabeth II. Also in attendance were representatives of the families of every 20th century Prime Minister since Asquith, including Olwen Carey Evans (daughter of Lloyd George), Lorna Howard (daughter of Stanley Baldwin), and Clarissa Avon (widow of Anthony Eden).
The same year, the Leisure Circle published Christopher Jones' book No. 10 Downing Street, The Story of a House. The foreword is a letter from Thatcher in which she summarises the feelings that she has for Number 10: "How much I wish that the public ... could share with me the feeling of Britain's historic greatness which pervades every nook and cranny of this complicated and meandering old building ... All Prime Ministers are intensely aware that, as tenants and stewards of No. 10 Downing Street, they have in their charge one of the most precious jewels in the nation's heritage."
Read more about this topic: 10 Downing Street
Famous quotes containing the word number:
“Among a hundred windows shining
dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
one burns
these several years, each night
as if the room within were aflame.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)