Sound the abbey bells and pick up an old copy of the Daily Star: The Crown has returned for a fourth season, and with it, finally, Margaret Thatcher (played by Gillian Anderson). Season 4 situates us right within the "Thatcher years" (1979-1990), when revolutions were raging, Northern Ireland burning, and, most importantly, Prince Charles was still unmarried and the line of succession was not yet secured. In short: Drama.
One early episode of the season centers on the missing case of Thatcher's son, Mark Thatcher (Freddie Fox)—or, as the BBC later contextualized the event, "one of the few times [Mark] managed to knock his mother off the front pages of Britain's newspapers."
The incident involved the 1982 Paris-Dakar rally, an off-road vehicle race from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. Thatcher was competing in the race with French rally driver Anne-Charlotte Verney when, on January 9th, Thatcher, Verney, and their mechanic were separated from the heard while racing through the Sahara Desert. They were soon after declared missing.
Thatcher was 29. He was by then working in business and had developed his own racing company. Thatcher later wrote in the Guardian that he “did absolutely no preparation” for the race. He participated simply because of the opportunity.
Here’s what happened.
How did Mark Thatcher go missing?
Thatcher was racing a Peugeot 504. As Thatcher explained, “It was a very long-wheelbase car, and what you need is a short-wheelbase car because of all the bumps. I remembering thinking, two days before we stopped, that this could all go very badly wrong.”
On a flat section between Tamanrasset and Timeiaouine, Algeria, Thatcher’s rear axle broke off, and the car was forced to stop. Other drivers in the convoy made note of where Thatcher had stopped before continuing on. The convoy somehow misreported Thatcher’s location, however, and soon the racing team was officially declared missing.
Thatcher stayed put by his vehicle, preparing for what he believed could be a week-long wait. As he recounted for The Guardian:
I was never scared for my life. We would have had to be there four weeks before really getting in danger. Second, we still had all the radiator water. Also, I had stripped the tires off and was ready to burn them when we saw a truck go towards the salt mine.
Back home in England, however, everyone was freaking out. Thatcher’s disappearance made front page headlines. Aircrafts were dispatched to search for Thatcher, and the Prime Minister (Thatcher's mum) even paid for part of the search herself to avoid public backlash over spending taxpayer dollars.
What happened to Mark Thatcher?
Six days after being declared missing and 35 miles off course, Thatcher was discovered by the Algerian air force.
Thatcher, hearing an aircraft, fired a flare and was soon intercepted by land rovers.
He later said he read the same book cover to cover multiple times to stay busy during the ordeal. After being rescued, he remarked to an interviewer that all he needed was “a beer and a sandwich, a bath and a shave.”
