Helmut Kohl’s candid views on the British establishment revealed in book

Margaret Thatcher used to nod off at geopolitical summits, Prince Philip was a “simpleton” and the marriage between Diana and Charles was an “idiotic affair”, according to the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose candid assessment of the British establishment’s behaviour in the 90s given during a series of interviews have been published in a book.
Legacy: The Kohl Transcripts, published against the wishes of the ex-chancellor, is the result of more than 600 hours of interviews between Kohl and journalist Heribert Schwan, who has previously ghostwritten the first two volumes of his biography.
Last Sunday, an extract printed in Der Spiegel magazine had revealed Kohl’s critical views on the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Now that the full book is published, it reveals that the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher used to fall asleep at G7 meetings. “Then she would nearly fall of her chair and clutch her handbag,”, Kohl told Schwan.
At a Nato summit in 1988, the two leaders clashed over the issue of short-range nuclear missiles, which Thatcher passionately argued needed to be stationed in the centre of Europe as a deterrent against Soviet aggression.
“She gave a real rallying speech, about how one must be brave, how one must not yield. It was really quite brazen.” Kohl said he turned to the British PM and told her: “Margaret, let’s leave the chancellor to one side, I’m now talking to you as Helmut Kohl.” Kohl then proceeded to tell Thatcher how his uncle and brother had fallen in the second world war, which was met, he said, with “deathly silence”.
His assessment of the royal wedding between Diana and Prince Charles is scathing: “Their marriage was an absolutely idiotic affair. If she had become queen immediately, she would have done her bit in bed, producing three princes – and with that she would have done her bit for the nation. Instead the woman had to travel around the world and talk to mayors everywhere, and wasted away.”
And while Kohl considered Charles a fairly friendly character, his view on Prince Philip is more blunt: “… der Edinburgh ist ein dummkopf (the Edinburgh one is a simpleton)”, Schwan quotes the ex-chancellor as saying.
Kohl’s relationship with US president Bill Clinton was distant, the book reveals. The German leader felt his American counterpart lacked rough edges and “swam in the mainstream” at the start of his presidency, while later allowing the Monica Lewinsky affair to distract him from what was going on in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Kohl reserves praise for leaders who, like him, were judged less kindly by journalists during their time in power. “My opinion is that [Ronald] Reagan was totally underestimated. Everyone thought Reagan was a buffoonish man, an actor,” he told Schwan. Even before Reagan became president, Kohl said, “he interested me”; “I realised that he knew nothing about Europe, but that he was willing to listen.”
And Kohl seemingly enjoyed a good relationship with Thatcher’s successor, John Major, too, claiming to have frequently called the British PM for off-the-cuff chats: “I just said to myself, why don’t I give John Major a call and wish him a nice day and say something nice. Then I would say: ‘I’m happy to hear your voice’.”
The book’s most scandalous revelation turns out to be a product of the ghostwriter’s vivid imagination. While interviewing the politician, Schwan said, he was so immersed in his thought patterns that “one night, I dreamt that Kohl was sleeping with Maggie Thatcher in order to win over the Iron Lady’s support for reunification”.
Kohl’s lawyers are reportedly still trying to have 115 quotations from the book deleted.