Bidisha's thought for the day: National treasures

Jane Austen or Jane Asher? Diana, Princess of Wales or Diana Athill? JK Rowling or PD James? Mary Seacole or Mary Portas? I'm participating in a radio show on national treasures, and wondering who qualifies. A Nash Tresh must be aged, stoical and talented, but not too cutting-edge. They must suggest an England of Kipling's cakes and Beatrix Potter. They must reassure and delight, like Kirstie Allsopp, a woman of such happy presence that I watch, hypnotised, as she fashions cork, twigs, spit and twine into Christmas decorations when you and I know it is nicer to buy them from Heal's. Margaret Thatcher's name came up a few times. I'm alarmed by the treshification of Thatcher. First, we found out that Tony Blair visited her for political advice. Then she appeared at Wimbledon – as a spectator – to rapturous cheering. The Channel 4 comedy film The Hunt for Tony Blair gave her a shockingly soft-focus treatment, referencing Vogue-era Madonna, Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, Boudicca and La Dolce Vita. Now the Iron Lady trailer has garnered rave notices. Even the complaints – such as Norman Tebbitt arguing that Thatcher was stronger and more capable than she is portrayed – are actually compliments. But one must not mistake charisma for decency, belligerence for strength, zeal for sincerity, legend for achievement. Luckily, the film is created by three actual heroes: Meryl Streep (bringing some of Devil Wears Prada's magazine editor Miranda to her performance), director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Abi Morgan. Thatcher's treshification is a form of cultural taxidermy: taking a dangerous beast of prey, filling it with sawdust and filing its teeth down so one may admire it as a symbolically reduced domestic object. But taxidermy rots eventually; a real National Treasure lasts for ever.