It’s finally arrived. My Margaret Thatcher biography is published on Thursday. It seems a long time since I started writing it sometime in 2023, which is odd given it’s a very short book. The book has two aims: to introduce Thatcher to new generations and to burst a few of the myths that have grown up about her over the years. Here’s an excerpt front the Introduction.
“If you’ve read Charles Moore’s magisterial and brilliantly written three-volume account of Margaret Thatcher’s life, I’m tempted to advise you to stop here. This short biography is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are like my personal trainer, Aaron Fowle, then you should read on. I had broken my hip and had gone to my local gym in Tunbridge Wells for some physiotherapy. Part of this was a weekly session with Aaron. He asked me what I did for a living, so I told him I presented a news and politics show on LBC radio each evening. Aaron then said: ‘So Margaret Thatcher… I’ve heard of her, but who was she? What did she do?’ Aaron was twenty-five at the time. He’s an intelligent guy, so I said I’d write this book for people like him who weren’t adults when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. People like an Italian friend of mine, Alessio, who is a keen young historian, but also, like many of his generation, is quite prepared to believe many of the myths that have grown up surrounding Margaret Thatcher’s beliefs and motivations.”
It’s quite a thought that in order to have actually voted for Margaret Thatcher in the 1987 general election, you’d now need to be 56 years old. If you were born in the day after she left office in November 1990, you’re now 35. For historical comparison, imagine I was writing a similar book in 1924, but on Benjamin Disraeli.
The book was reviewed in today’s Observer by Mary Beard, who totally understood the approach I took and said that she had learned new things from reading it and from some of her assumptions about Thatcher being challenged. I know I’m regarded as a keeper of the Thatcher flame, but I’ve tried to avoid hagiography and have certainly covered some of her flaws and failures.
Anyway, I hope you will buy the book and judge for yourself, or but it for one of your children or grandchildren. You’d make me very happy if you did.
