Mrs Thatcher's hanky

After the recent death of Mrs Thatcher, I remembered a very direct link to her. It was in the days of the rather lovely illustrated BA tail fins as orchestrated by Newell and Sorrel. They had proved very controversial and they were looking to rationalize the fleet, maybe to go to a simpler set of continents rather than one for each country. I got the nod for trying out some designs for each continent. I was pretty excited. I loved the idea of seeing my artwork flying overhead. However, before they got anywhere, on the news popped up Mrs Thatcher at an exhibition with Lord King, head honcho at BA at the time. With a simple gesture of holding her nose at something stinky and dropping a hanky over the tailfins, the whole thing was effectively history. Tailfins left on the drawing board. Here are the drawings rescued from historical irrelevance.