Margaret Thatcher may have been not for turning, but the handle on a lavatory door that she encountered in America proved equally stubborn.

A hitherto private account of the Iron Lady’s visit to the US in 1977, written by an official at the British consulate-general in Texas, records that both she and her husband, Denis, had to be rescued from the lavatory during the trip.

That was not the only obstacle the Leader of the Opposition had to overcome during her stay at the Warwick Hotel in Houston, wrote Roy Fox on September 21, 1977.

The problems began with a “failure to provide either a hairdresser or someone to press Mrs Thatcher’s dress” and continued when a secretary had to take the future Prime Minister’s clothing home to wash because there were no laundry facilities.

Fox’s report provides no sense that Mrs Thatcher found any of this amusing.

“The inside door handle of the bathroom would not work properly and both Mrs Thatcher and Mr Thatcher had to be rescued from bondage on different occasions,” he wrote. “This was all rather surprising as the Warwick is considered to be one of the best hotels in Houston.”

And while she “enjoyed enormously” her visit to an oil rig and “very much enjoyed” her trip to Nasa, her irritation perhaps showed through when she was asked a question about the British economy by a CBS camera-man. He was told in no uncertain terms that the subject was off limits.

“She said . . .this was being rude to her hosts,” wrote Fox, “and later asked her secretary to remind [her] that she should not give any further interviews to CBS”.

The rest of Mrs Thatcher’s American trip seemed to go rather better. R.M. Russell, of the British Embassy in Washington, noted that when it ended “she was thoroughly exhausted . . . and she appeared satisfied”.

Back in Britain, a briefing paper written for the Labour Government by an official called Nigel Wicks noted that “the dominant characteristics of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches is that they say very little. She never goes into details of Conservative policy on particular topics, eg, transport, industry, devolution or the economy. This is clearly a considered approach.”

“Nevertheless”, he said, “she is putting together a programme which will enable her to enter the next election with very few specific commitments.”

A second policy paper, entitled Thoughts on the Government’s Future Strategy, gave warning that “among the wider electorate, there has probably been an attitudinal shift to the ‘right’. . . This trend threatens to favour the Tories, and we must admit that [Mrs] Thatcher has exploited this by her appeal to materialism and individualism”.

Written by Bernard Donoughue, of the No 10 policy unit, it advised that to win the next election the Government must “deliver material benefits to Labour’s voters and potential voters, raise the moral of Party activists, neutralise Thatcher’s appeal and . . . exploit her weaknesses”.

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson