This third and climactic volume of Charles Moore's authorised biography gives the definitive account of Margaret Thatcher's third term in office and her life after it. Three stories run through the whole book. The first is Mrs Thatcher's dominance of her government in almost every domestic field, but also her growing intolerance of dissent, the increasing alienation of her most senior ministers over Europe and the fatal corrosion which followed. The second is her commanding presence on the world stage (including relations with Reagan, Gorbachev, Bush, Kohl and Mandela), her role in the ending of the Cold War, her central position in the response to the invasion of Kuwait, and her increasing isolation as America's priorities in Europe changed. The third is how she, a woman, coped and led in political worlds almost entirely occupied by men. The three stories come dramatically together in the autumn of 1990 when, at the moment of greatest domestic danger, she travelled to Paris to participate in the ceremonies ending the Cold War. The chapters here on her fall are, in their drama, unmatched in modern political biography.
Because Moore has interviewed all the major participants, who have spoken with candour, and has had access to all her papers, he is able to take us behind the scenes in these events and to give the feeling that we are in the room watching and listening as they unfold. (This includes, for the first time, a riveting account of the conflicts at her court.) Throughout, we see Mrs Thatcher's astonishing capacity to articulate her principles in the clearest possible terms and to fashion policy from them. The strength of her opposition to apartheid and her prescience on environmental issues are just two of the areas on which the book rewrites the standard accounts. In her combative retirement - an iconic figure to some and anathema to others - she continued to influence events in Britain profoundly; Moore shows the degree to which, during her third term and after, she directly shaped the path to our divided present. His account of her final years, with a few loyal supporters and the light dying, is beautifully judged.
In October 1990, as this book comes to a climax, Mrs Thatcher entertained President Mitterrand of France to lunch at the British Embassy in Rome. The young Frenchwoman who took notes for Mitterrand, not an obvious Thatcherite, wrote afterwards, 'She had energy, charm and vision - especially energy - to an extent I had never seen before and never saw since in anyone else. I would have thrown myself into the Tiber for her.' This book and its predecessors show more clearly than ever before how the energy, charm and vision of Margaret Thatcher changed Britain and the world.
