From my first exposure to the idea Pair Programming on Wiki, through to what seems now the very definite empirical support for its effectiveness - though was I simply dreaming that in my own biased worldview stupor? - I've been inspired to cast the net more widely. My favorite pair in software since I started to think this way remains Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls, based on the former's lovely account of the early days of Smalltalk at Parc, in which the word "love" is indeed used unashamedly. But what has proved so effective in programming and wider issues of software development is only perhaps just an echo of the importance of pairs in other fields:

• Johnson and Boswell
• Wilson and House
• Tolkein and Lewis
• Crick and Watson.

Please add, of course, or show that there is nothing much to any example. But I say that there is always something immensely powerful about two people, with comparable but complementary skills and very similar goals, coming to collaborate very closely.

• Bush and Wolfowitz?

Woodrow Wilson and "Colonel" House are also not an unimportant example in the first quarter of the 20th century. There are others of course. Moving on though to my specific quarry (and allowing for future reshaping, in the time-honored Dan Ingalls tradition of "get something working, even in Basic") ...

There were many "friends" of course while her power was at its height. But in the early days of her less publicised politicking one man stands out, easily, to anyone who has bothered to ask what made the iron lady tick so steadily (or annoyingly) under such immense pressure later. So I suggest that what Margaret Thatcher herself writes about Keith Joseph is very key to understanding her. The quotes are all from Path To Power, the second volume of her autobiography, published in 1995 but dealing with the period prior to Thatcher becoming Prime Minister in 1979.

From the frontspiece:

This book is dedicated to the memory of KEITH JOSEPH

At the end of the Acknowledgements:

Finally, I had the benefit of the recollections and insights of the late Lord Joseph of Portsoken. As he approached the end in hospital, Keith, though mortally weak, was still alert; characteristically, after what would be our final discussion, he asked whether I would find it useful if he recorded his views in a memorandum. Sadly, it never came. The dedication of this volume records a debt which is acknowledged but which can never be repaid.

On p50-1, talking of her political reading as an undergraduate at Oxford and the socialist tendencies even within Tory party paternalism:

Not surprisingly, therefore, the most powerful critique of socialist planning and the socialist state which I read at this time, and to which I have returned so often since, FA Hayek's The Road To Serfdom, is dedicated famously 'To the socialists of all parties' ... I cannot claim to have grasped the implications of Hayek's little masterpiece at this time. It was only in the mid-1970s, when Hayek's works were right at the top of the reading list given me by Keith Joseph, that I really came to grips with the ideas he put forward.

Most importantly, on p135-6, discussing the Tory leadership election of 1965:

It was Keith Joseph who persuaded me to change my mind [and vote for Ted Heath]. By now Keith was a friend, not just a senior colleague whom I liked. We worked together, though with him very much as the senior partner, on pensions policy in 1964-65. Like everyone else who came to know him, I was deeply impressed by the quality of his mind and the depth of his compassion. Keith had gone into politics for the same reason that many on the left had done so - he wanted to improve the lot of ordinary people, particularly those he saw living deprived, stunted, unfulfilled lives. Many jokes would be made - and the best of them by Keith himself - about the way in which he changed his mind and reversed his policies on matters ranging from housing to health to social benefits. But the common thread was his relentless search for the right answer to the practical problems of human suffering. So I took him very seriously when he telephoned ...

Let's just check we got that. Margaret Thatcher took Keith Joseph very seriously in 1965 (and later) because of what?

You don't of course have to believe in the integrity of the author of this passage. For the moment, you only have to understand that I do. Passionately. That may help to explain a little the non-meeting of minds we ran into discussing selfishness and Thatcher's ideals recently. -- Richard Drake