WA G WITH ALKING IANTS.

TIM BELL - later Lord Bell - who died this week was an advertising and PR genius who was a principal architect of Margaret Thatcher's three election victories and a key figure in her rise to become a world stateswoman, alongside Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, as the Iron Curtain crumbled. Bell never hid his adoration of Thatcher or his respect for politicians of that era, including Nigel Lawson and Norman Tebbit. He would have disdained the political pygmies who replaced them and who are now squabbling over Brexit - as this extract from his riveting memoir shows. . . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]