Hinterland
Margaret Thatcher was known for sleeping only 4 hours a night. She appeared to have no absorbing interests or passions outside politics. Her life was dominated by her work.
For her there was no rest, no hobby, no activity to take her mind off work. Ironically she could have been bedfellows with the current ‘hustle culture’ disciples.
Edna Healey, the wife of Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, is believed to be the first person to refer to a politician’s interests beyond politics as their ‘hinterland’. She coined the term in reference to Margaret Thatcher.
History is full of politicians with interesting hobbies. Churchill famously painted and enjoyed bricklaying, Colin Powell liked repairing old cars, Condoleezza Rice and Edward Heath were avid pianists, Clinton loved the Saxophone, and Nixon enjoyed bowling.
Denis Healey took the view that it was not possible to understand modern politics without knowing something of history and that poets and novelists can teach us more than scientists. Healey infamously watched a four-hour production of Hamlet in the middle of a financial crisis.
It is impossible to prove that Margaret Thatcher would have been a better politician if she liked painting or piano, but instinct tells you that it is probably so.
Ever since reading Denis Healey’s use of hinterland I have always felt an affinity for the term.
To me it is the perfect term to describe that depth which makes a person ‘real’.
We live in a culture that is so obsessed with grinding out work, this is evident in both many of our politicians – few of whom have a life outside politics – and our workforce.
Leagues of intelligent, interesting, and multi-faceted graduates are funnelled into high-status jobs in consulting, law, and finance until they have had their will to live hammered out of them and they are left feeling burnt out and a husk of themselves.
Beyond the societally destructive effects these jobs have, they create these carbon copies of personalities or habits – as graduates are often required to fit in to get promoted.
If you asked many of them to define themselves outside of their job they would struggle.
I was recently speaking to a consultant about brewing mead. They immediately said “God you are doing all these things, my colleagues say my rowing isn’t a hobby and I need to get a hobby”.
They were an Olympic rower who worked out 14 times a week, but felt like they didn’t have a hobby. I thought that was quite revealing of the colleagues’ mindset. Whilst 14 times a week is obviously obsessive, to me saying “I won the boat race” makes someone far more interesting than the typically bland consultant.
Some would say that it is impossible for everyone to be so unique, to have that hinterland. I would contend that is wholly untrue – it just requires introspection and would be far more fulfilling than grinding away at some soulless job.