Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

For better or for ill, Margaret Thatcher brought about a bigger social and political revolution than any British Prime Minister in the post war years. Her personality is the subject of endless fascination and speculation by her friends and her enemies and no one disputes her crucial impact on the lives of the British people.

Jonathan Aitken knew Margaret Thatcher for forty years. He was a member of her Cabinet and for much of the time a family friend. This book is the nearest anyone has got to date to getting under Margaret's Thatcher's skin, of understanding her psychology and her unique capacity to exercise power. The theme of this book is the importance of Thatcher's strong and sometimes difficult personality on political events and decisions. It includes the author's eye witness perspective at both private and public episodes of her life. The author has many new sources including the Thatcher archive at Churchill College, Cambridge and extensive interviews with her parliamentary and cabinet colleagues as well as with world leaders such as Gorbachev, Kissinger and George Bush Senior. One main achievement is to make Thatcher come alive to a generation who have never known her. Aitken emphasises constantly the complexity of her personality and has many new anecdotes about her which give the narrative a thoroughly lively tone, while being an authentic account of Thatcher's historical achievements.

Based on the chronology of her life, this is not an official biography of Margaret Thatcher and, though positive in many of its judgements, it is also a critical portrait in the best sense.