The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister

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THIS book was originally published in two volumes totalling more than 1,200 pages.The present volume is drastically reduced to make it more accessible to the general reader. Inevitably much of the detail and some of the colour of the original have been sacrificed. But I hope that the integrity of the book has been preserved. I am immensely grateful to David Freeman of the University of California for carrying out the work of abridgement so skilfully. I could not have done it myself, but I think he has done a superb job. If there is now a somewhat greater emphasis on foreign relations and the major enduring themes of Lady Thatcher’s life and rather less on her early life and the small change of party politics, I think that is appropriate as her career moves into a longer historical perspective. It is now 30 years since she came to power and 19 since she fell. In that time the world has continued to evolve: some of the hopes raised by the ending of the Cold War have not been realised, while Islamist terrorism, climate change and now a global financial crisis pose new problems scarcely imagined in her day. Beyond a very brief contemporary conclusion to the last chapter, however, I have not attempted to rewrite the original book. Remarkably little new information has emerged which requires substantial reinterpretation or revision. Most of the assumptions and judgments I made in 2000 and 2003, I believe, still stand. They are themselves part of the record of the time. For two decades after her fall Margaret Thatcher continued to exercise a powerful grip on the imagination of the country and of her successors. But already a new generation is growing up who scarcely remember her.

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