[Gorbachev] arrived and she had him down to Chequers, I was down there for that meeting with him, and it was at that meeting that she came out and made the famous statement that she thought he was someone who she could do business with. And what was interesting about him, for all of us I think in the meetings, was he actually could conduct dialogue and a debate in a way that British parliamentarians could. All the previous people from the Soviet Union just read out the standard line, they would put on their spectacles and drone away. Gromyko, for years as Foreign Minister, he would do it without notes because he had a very good memory but he just repeated time and time again the same line, it wasn't really a debate at all. Gorbachev would listen to the argument and respond. Sometimes one noticed that his entourage were slightly surprised by the things that he was saying. She found this tremendously refreshing. I think Gorbachev is greatly underestimated.
http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/colle
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