Margaret Thatcher The Authorized Biography.

• Author: Beechey, David
• Position: Book review

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, From Grantham to the Falklands by Charles Moore, Knopf: New York, 2013, ISBN-13: 978-0307958945, 896 pp., $15.98 (Amazon), $14.98 (Kindle); originally published in the United Kingdom as Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not for Turning, Alan Lane Publishers: London, 2013, ISBN: 13-978-0713992823.

This is a big book in more senses than one and, despite its length and the close type, it only covers the first part of Margaret Thatcher's political life and ends with the retaking of the Falkland Islands from Argentina.

Mrs Thatcher chose Charles Moore and it was agreed between them that nothing would be published before her death and the result is that many of her contemporaries have spoken more freely in interviews with the author than they might otherwise have done. There are many unexpected observations. There are eleven pages of acknowledgements and the list of interviewees is impressive. The last one on the list is surprising in that Moore gives his "special thanks to Tommy, my hunter, who jumps everything and who was essential to my sanity"! Charles Moore is a surprising choice because he is right wing, High Church, High Tory, and a faux Aristocrat. He went to Eton and loves to partake in the country sports, beloved by the aristocracy. He is far from the sort of person that Margaret Thatcher would have found as a natural companion coming from her lower middle class background.

There are very few people over thirty years old in the UK who do not have very strong views about Mrs Thatcher because she almost singlehandedly halted Britain's decline into socialism. There are still many people who are sorry that she did so. She was above all English as opposed to being British and she did not have much time for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Her attitude to Scotland leaves no doubt in my mind that had there been a referendum about Scottish Independence in the 1990s then Scotland would have left the UK. Moore makes it quite clear that he believes that her instinctive, stubborn beliefs in self-help, sound money, low taxes and patriotism saved Britain from near terminal decline. Many people in the UK still feel the opposite.

The author traces her early childhood and her relationship with her family. She adored her Father who was at one time Mayor of the small Lincolnshire town of Grantham as well as the owner of a successful grocer's shop. He was a Methodist lay preacher and...