Charles moore margaret thatcher
- "With unequaled authority and dramatic detail, the first volume of Charles Moore's authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher reveals as never before the early life, rise to power, and first years as prime minister of the woman who transformed.
- Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher, published after her death on 8 April 2013, immediately supersedes all earlier books written about her.
- Charles Moore has done a masterful job in this biography of Margaret Thatcher.
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Margaret Thatcher: Herself Alone: The Authorized Biography
For openers, I freely admit to having been thoroughly daunted by the sheer physical presence of Charles Moore’s MARGARET THATCHER: HERSELF ALONE, the third and final volume in his definitive biography of one of the Western world’s most noteworthy leaders.
Its 1,006 pages weigh in at an imposing 3 lbs. 5 oz. The family cat, who normally enjoys extended lap-time when recruited as a warm bookrest, was having none of it. I settled for a big pillow instead and dug in while the volume was still cold from the doorstep, calculating how many pages I’d have to read every day to complete what looked like a literary marathon, a veritable black hole of dry textbook prose.
But if it had been such an awful ordeal, you probably wouldn’t be reading this now. And if you’re one of the enlightened folks who’ve traveled through Moore’s previous two (equally weighty and illuminating) volumes about Britain’s most celebrated and notorious 20th-century Prime Minister, then you’ll alr
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Margaret Thatcher was the longest-serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century and one of the most influential figures of the postwar era. Volume One of Moore's authorized biography gives unparalleled insight into her early life, especially through her extensive correspondence with her sister, and recreates brilliantly the atmosphere of British politics as she was making her way, taking us up to the zenith of her power: victory in the Falklands.
Based on unrestricted access to all Lady Thatcher's papers, unpublished interviews with her and all her major colleagues, this is the indispensable portrait of a towering figure of our times.
About Charles Moore
Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, publ
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Richard Vinen
Curiously, Margaret Thatcher seemed a more distant figure in 2013, just after her death, when Charles Moore published the first volume of his biography of her, than she does now. Then, while the economic aspects of Thatcherism were so widely accepted that they had ceased to be controversial, Tory leaders wanted to break with Thatcher’s social conservatism. Michael Gove said that his party needed to ‘blow the cobwebs off its Miss Havisham’ and ‘set itself free from the ossified parody of greatness she has become’. Brexit has brought Thatcher, and the savage political polarisations of the 1980s, back. Many of those who wish to leave the European Union brandish her image as though it were a relic of a medieval saint.
This third and final volume of Moore’s biography centres on Thatcher’s growing isolation in the late 1980s. She was often at odds with her Cabinet colleagues, she loathed the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, and her relations with George Bush were less good than had been those with his predecessor as US president, Ronald Reagan. Thatcher’s friends, however