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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Woman of No Impotence,
By Arktos2 (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady Vol 2 (Hardcover)
While she was still Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher paid a visit to Yugoslavia, where she had a meeting with President Tito. The conversation turned to China, where Chairman Mao's widow had recently been stirring up trouble for the leadership. Tito remarked that he disapproved of women interfering in politics. "I don't interfere in politics, " declared his guest, eyes ablazing, "I AM politics."Therein can be found both the secret of Margaret Thatcher's success and the seeds of her downfall. Her supreme confidence helped overcome widespread doubts that a woman could lead her party and her country, but in the end her arrogance alienated the very people she needed to retain power. Thatcher's story presents a unique challenge to political biographers, largely because her overpowering personality and strident views make a fair assessment difficult to achieve. The writer has to tread a fine line between hagiography and demolition job. Happily, John Campbell's book manages to avoid these pitfalls, and his account of Thatcher's life and times is even-handed, thorough and highly readable. The first volume of Campbell's biography - The Grocer's Daughter - covered Thatcher's early life and career, concluding with her arrival on the threshold of Number Ten. This second volume concentrates on her entire eleven-and-a-half years as mistress of Downing Street, as well as the aftermath of her removal from power. The first thing to say is that it's a huge read - over 800 pages. But this is no more than the subject deserves, given Thatcher's dominance, not only in her role as Prime Minister, but also as an inveterate meddler in the work of her ministers. From health and education to local government finance and foreign affairs, there was barely an aspect of policy which Margaret Thatcher did not seek to influence. All the important events of her premiership are there - the three election victories, the Falkands, Westland, the miners' strike, the Poll Tax, and her dramatic departure at the hands of her own party. But the book goes beyond the big stories to put her premiership in a wider context. Take housing: Campbell shows that Thatcher's policy of encouraging council tenants to buy their own homes, while prohibiting local authorities from building new houses with the proceeds, led to a massive shortage of affordable housing, and by extension to the high numbers of homeless people still seen on British streets today. Campbell's thorough research shines brilliantly throughout the book, but U.S. readers may find this depth of detail just too much information to take in. During some passages, even my eyes started to glaze over at so many references to obscure events and personalities from Britain's political past. Of greater interest may be the sections covering Thatcher's dealings with Ronald Reagan. Thatcher apologists often claim that Britain's standing in the world grew taller as a result of her strong support for the U.S. President. But Campbell makes good use of Reagan's archival papers to reveal the true relationship of these political soulmates. While they undoubtedly got on well, the President rarely let their friendship get in the way of his policy objectives. Thatcher believed they were working as partners to save the world from tyranny, but Reagan failed to consult her even on such important matters as the invasion of Grenada (a British Commonwealth territory) or his suggestion to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Reykjavik summit that the US and USSR should abolish all nuclear weapons. Even so, Thatcher never lost an opportunity to catch the presidential ear. Campbell recounts Reagan breaking off from one of her many telephone rants to observe: "Isn't she marvellous!" One of the most enjoyable sections of the book focuses on the burnishing of the Thatcher image, especially in the later years of her premiership. Campbell documents the change from the clothing of a "middle-class mimsy" to the power-shoulders of a leading lady, and her increasingly imperial airs. The regal touch was most memorably on show when she emerged from Number 10 to announce "We have become a grandmother." But the author also offers a reminder of her qualities as a consummate actress. In 1990 she delivered a conference speech in which she compared the new bird of freedom logo for the Liberal Democratic Party to the dead parrot from the Monty Python sketch. She had never seen the routine, but delivered it with perfect timing to laughter and cheers from her audience. The following month, she was an ex-Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher's fall from power was pure political theatre, and those of us who watched it unfold on our television screens will never forget those dramatic days. The big question in my mind was: could Campbell's account rise to the occasion? The answer: a resounding yes. Every twist and turn of the spectacle is followed, without recourse to melodrama or purple prose, and what could easily have been a disappointing damp squib of a section turns out to be a fine account of a political career in meltdown. For me, the most intriguing part of the book describes Thatcher's life after leaving Number 10. Politically-speaking, she was dead in the water - there is no role in the British constitution for an unemployed prime minister. But Campbell is astute enough to highlight the human aspects of her new situation. Only days earlier, she was being feted by President Mitterrand at Versailles. Now, shorn of the Downing Street machine, she had difficulty even using the telephone to find a plumber. Thatcher's refusal to adapt to her new situation caused her successor much grief, and the book relates the despair which John Major felt at her off-stage sniping , especially when he was trying to rebuild bridges to Britain's European partners. Having already documented the lives of two former Prime Ministers - Lloyd George and Edward Heath - Campbell is able to view the Thatcher years with a historical perspective. The conclusion of this book, however, is disappointing. A work of this magnitude deserves a resounding finale, but instead it runs into the sand, offering little more than a couple of pages to sum up Thatcher's impact. It's not a bad ending, but I feel that the author could have done justice to the rest of the book by bringing together more effectively the various strands of Thatcher's life. That said, the book is a masterpiece of political biography, meticulously researched and written in that enviable style which both informs and entertains. It may be too soon to call it the definitive biography of Britain's first woman prime minister, but the next time an author sets out to write Margaret Thatcher's premiership, this is the first book they should turn to.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thatcher should be every girl's heroine,
By
This review is from: Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady Vol 2 (Hardcover)
The mid-90's pop band Spice Girls called the ultimate Girl Power as Margaret Thatcher. The British singers were on the money because Thatcher was a revolutionary Prime Minister. She kept her own counsel and could not be manipulated by the popularity polls. This account of her political career is the ultimate study in what Henry Kissinger once said "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac". Churchill and Thatcher proved that Britain produced two formidable leaders who survived Machiavellian daggers over and over again and got their way before being ousted.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love Her or Loath Her: Margaret Thatcher Mattered,
By
This review is from: Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady Vol 2 (Hardcover)
This book made its way onto my bookshelf thanks to a thoughtful gift from my parents. I've always had an admiration of Thatcher, not because of any particular policy (admittedly I didn't know that much about her particular policies ie the success of mass privatisation and the failures of poll tax) but because of her evident strength, articulation, will, ideology and even to some extent, her appearance. The first female Prime Minister in the United Kingdom she was someone who, regardless of the side of the fence on which you sit, she made an immense impact on the way we live our lives today. We may not be able to pinpoint it directly, but her policies and her strength mattered and she came along at a time when Britain was on its knees. She entered the Premiership in a difficult situation, but she left the Premiership with the country in a much better position than it had been (even if, at the time, the country was back in economic turmoil).I'm not going to get into a debate about why I think she mattered, because that is what this book does. Campbell presents a concise biography of Thatcher's time in power, covering all the major points of her premiership and providing a balanced, but sympathetic view to the Iron Lady. He talks about her relationship with her cabinet ministers and manages to explain quite clearly how the strong personality which made her first two terms so successful, ultimately led to her downfall in her third. The book was extremely well researched, constantly picking apart the memoirs of those in cabinet and correcting errors or claims made in them with the true facts. It doesn't glaze over the big controversies of Thatcher's tenure as PM even looking at the big corruption scandals which again led to her eventual removal from office. The analysis of her relationships with other world leaders was also a very interesting aspect of the book. The Reagan / Thatcher relationship in particular shows how close these two on both a personal and professional level. They had an unflinching respect for each other, yet when Thatcher disagreed, she didn't make an exception for Reagan and step aside, Campbell manages to show quite clearly that when the Lady had a view, she would hold her ground simply until she won the argument. This did not mean that the was unmoveable. As Campbell displays in the book, Thatcher would merely argue as a way of informing her side, and although a lot of her colleagues found it both frightening and tiring, arguing with the Iron Lady simply managed to grant her more information on a particular argument. A wonderful book that gives an immensely detailed account of both Thatcher as a person and Thatcher as a politician. Usually perceived as a cruel and uncaring woman by the mainstream press and even the younger generations, she is given a human dimension which we only really saw on that moment she was exited from Number 10. We are given a more colourful picture of "Maggie" with which any reader can gain the important information required to make an informed view on her. Some may read this and have their view that she was the worst thing to happen to this country reinforced. Others, like myself, may read this and have their admiration for her grow as you realise that she really was the best person for the job.
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