The Dear Bill letters were a regular feature in the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and purported to be the private correspondence of Denis Thatcher, husband of the then-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The series took the form of fortnightly letters to Bill by his friend and golfing partner Denis. The letters were split equally between reactionary grumblings about the state of the country and vituperative comments on contemporary politics, with regular passing references to the goings-on of a fictional collection of acquaintances. Bill was never identified but was widely taken to be Denis Thatcher's close friend Bill Deedes.
The concept of writing satire from the point of view of a Prime Ministerial spouse was not new to the magazine, who had published Mrs Wilson's Diary along the same lines during the Wilson government. It allowed the writers wide rein to comment on the personal peculiarities of senior politicians without seeming overly absurd, and was presented in a context that was clearly fictional, but seemingly quite plausible.
