Who Are Margaret Thatcher's Twin Children, Mark and Carol?

• Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Denis, had two children together, twins Mark and Carol.
• Both Thatcher twins have remained in the public eye.
• Carol Thatcher has written books about both Margaret and Denis, and has spoken frankly about the complicated aspects of her relationship with her mother. Mark was a race car driver.

Since twins Mark and Carol Thatcher were born–within minutes of each other–they've led quite different lives. The children of former U.K. Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, and her husband Denis Thatcher, play a minor role in season four of The Crown, albeit with Mark's famous 1982 Sahara desert disappearance mostly being the topic that's covered.

To better understand Mark and Carol Thatcher, we've compiled information about their childhood, their adult lives, and the drama that has followed each.

The Thatcher twins were born August 15, 1953.

Mark and Carol Thatcher were born via Caesarean section six weeks premature, according to The Scotsman. It was just a few months before their mother completed her law school exams, and she was an MP by the time the twins were six. The two went to boarding school at relatively young ages.

As the Radio Times noted and season 4 of The Crown portrays, it is widely believed that Mark was the child who received more affection from their mother. Carol herself wrote in A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl, "Mark was certainly the star," per an excerpt that appeared in The Daily Mail.

The Scotsman said, "Carol was raised by nannies and teachers at St. Paul's boarding school," because her mother was busy in politics and her father had a lucrative and high-stress corporate job of his own. According to The Guardian, Mark went to Harrow School in London where he was a gifted young athlete.

Mark is perhaps best known for his time as a race car driver, including a disappearance during a rally.

In his young adulthood, 26-year-old Mark Thatcher made headlines for being a part of England's competitive car racing scene, per Tatler. Most notably, he competed in Le Mans, a prestigious 24-hour endurance race in France, in 1980, and again in 1981 and 1982.

While at Le Mans, Tatler noted that Thatcher was approached with the opportunity to participate in what was then called the Paris-Dakar rally, another well-known race that went from France to Senegal. In 1982, he competed with a small crew, and after the group stopped to fix their axle, they became separated from the rest of the pack.

The story of Mark Thatcher's disappearance made national news, and, ultimately, he was missing for six days before being found safe somewhere in the Sahara. According to a BBC story, Thatcher made an ill-fated comment prior to the Paris-Dakar Rally.

"I've now raced in Le Mans and other things–this rally is no problem," he said.

The effect of the disappearance on Margaret Thatcher is portrayed in season 4 of The Crown, with Gillian Anderson playing the former prime minister, Freddie Fox as Mark and Rebecca Humphries as Carol.

Mark is no stranger to high-level controversies.

Even beyond his racing and participation in the Paris-Dakar rally, Mark has remained in headlines. The Guardian noted that scrutiny was placed on his friendship with Syrian businessman Wafici Saïd, who was connected to the Saudi royal family.

In the mid-'80s, Mark was involved in a controversial business deal in Oman, according to The Guardian. Mark was working for Cementation, a firm which his mother, while serving as prime minister, reportedly advocated should receive a lucrative contract despite not being perceived as a top choice, per The Guardian.

The paper also claimed that Margaret Thatcher had written a speech admitting to her own impropriety and involvement in the deal that secretly netted her son £216,000,000.

"In the unpublished draft she admits she should not have allowed Mark to follow her around the world profiting from a British prime minister's relationships with foreign rulers," the authors wrote. "She also admits she knew that, during her official sales trip to Oman in 1981, her son was in the pay of the construction firm Cementation."

The Telegraph also alleges that papers related to the Oman deal were due to be released to the public before the Cabinet Office decided to keep them private until roughly 2053.

One of his most infamous moments came when Mark was arrested and charged for having a role in helping to pay for a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, per The New York Times. The paper wrote that their plan was to oust then-president Teodoro Obiang, and that Thatcher initially denied the allegations.

He eventually admitted that he had a role in helping finance the attempted coup as part of a plea deal which got him out of serving any prison time.

Mark has kept a low profile in recent years.

After making news for his alleged involvement in the coup, Mark has seemed resolute to stay more out of the spotlight. It was reported in 2004 by the BBC that he was worth £60,000,000 due largely to investment deals he made while in South Africa.

When his father died in 2013, Mark inherited the honorific of "Sir," per The Guardian. The same article said that he was spending a good deal of time in Marbella, Spain, and Barbados.

According to a 2015 Guardian piece, Mark may have been "in effect forbidden to live in Britain," because his exploits hurt Margaret's reputation in the country.

Carol Thatcher is a journalist who has written books about both her parents.

According to The Guardian, Carol Thatcher was a "popular if eccentric, TV personality" who was known for winning I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here and appearing on programs including The Andrew Marr Show, The One Show, and The Wright Stuff.

In February 2009, Thatcher was involved in a controversy of her own after she reportedly referred to Black tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as a "golliwog," a phrase that refers to a racially insensitive caricature that was popular in the U.S., England, and mainland Europe in the late 19th century. Per CNN, Thatcher made the comment off-camera, but she still lost her job at the BBC.

As a journalist, Carol Thatcher has written several books, the most widespread of which are Below the Parapet: The Biography of Denis Thatcher, Diary of an Election, which was about her mother campaigning, and A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl, which focused on Margaret's later years.

In addition, she conducted one of very few long-form interviews with her father, as part of a documentary made towards the end of his life.

Carol has spoken candidly about her complicated relationship with her mother and Mark being the favored twin.

Once she reached adulthood and became more of an independent figure, Carol has been willing to voice her issues with her mom including specifics about how she was raised. After an older Margaret reportedly expressed dismay that her grown children were not around her much, Carol rebuffed her.

"A mother cannot reasonably expect her grown-up children to boomerang back, gushing coziness and make up for lost time," Carol said according to The Scotsman. "Absentee mum, then Gran in overdrive is not an equation that balances."

In 2006, Carol was asked by the Independent whether she would ever consider going into politics like her mother, and responded, "No–one is enough in the family. I don't want to do it."

It is also believed by many that Mark and Carol's complex relationship stems from her assertion that Mark was the preferred child. According to the Independent, she once said, "I always felt I came second of the two. Unloved is not the right word but I never felt that I made the grade.”

Per The Guardian, it seemed that Carol and Denis actually had a closer relationship. In another excerpt of her writing from The Daily Mail, Carol wrote that the death of Denis was quite challenging for Margaret to grapple with.

“Losing Dad ... was truly awful for Mum, not least because her dementia meant she kept forgetting he was dead,” she wrote. “I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again.

Mark has two children.

After marrying wealthy Texan Diane Burgdorf in 1987, Mark Thatcher began splitting time between London, Dallas, and Switzerland, per The Guardian. They were married for 18 years and had two children, Michael, 31, and Amanda, 27, before splitting up in 2005.

Michael was a well-regarded high school football player, making the 2007 state finals in Texas, ultimately going on to attend Texas A&M. Amanda, who attended the University of Richmond, is likely best known for the speech she gave at her grandmother's funeral in 2013.

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Margaret was apparently very fond of her grandchildren and, according to The Guardian, once said, "when my daughter-in-law sends me photographs of the grandchildren, apart from seeing them in the flesh, that is the greatest pleasure I have in the whole year, far exceeding everything else."

In the case of Carol, The Guardian noted that she has not married or had kids, but dated former politician Jonathan Aitken, who eventually served prison time on a perjury charge.

She was joined at Margaret's funeral by her boyfriend Marco Grass, a ski instructor.

The relationship between the twins is believed to be strained.

As adults, it has been reported by The Telegraph that Mark and Carol "cannot bear to be in the same room." In 2015, an alleged (and all too common) source of tension between the pair was an auction of their mother's possessions after she passed.

Per The Telegraph, Carol was spearheading the sale, which was expected to generate more than £500,000, but Mark did not support the plan.

According to another A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl excerpt published in The Scottish Daily Mail, Carol compared herself unfavorably (albeit humorously) to her brother.

"Mark is married to a beautiful girl, has two fabulous children and various mansions scattered around the world," she wrote. "I’m an ancient spinster of no fixed abode living in a rented holiday flat in a ski resort. I still don’t measure up awfully well on the Richter scale."

Over the years, whether through penning best-selling novels or time spent on the race track, the Thatcher children have kept their family name a newsworthy one in U.K. society.

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Grant Rindner

Grant Rindner is a culture and music journalist in New York. He has written for Billboard, Complex, and i-D, among other outlets.