In 1966, Mr Reagan entered politics, winning the governorship of California by a landslide. It was then that he began the habit, retained for 30 years, of writing letters to "My Darling First Lady". On their wedding anniversary in 1967 he sat up in bed one night and wrote: "I'm looking at you as you lie here beside me on this 15th anniversary and wondering why everyone has only just discovered you are the First Lady. You've been the First - in fact the only - to me for 15 years." He often signed himself "The Gov".