Margaret Thatcher Volume One: The Grocer's Daughter - Hardcover

Campbell, John

3.91

107 ratings by Goodreads

9780224040976: Margaret Thatcher Volume One: The Grocer's Daughter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224040979 ISBN 13: 9780224040976

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2000

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When Margaret Thatcher unexpectedly emerged to challenge Edward Heath for the Conservative leadership in 1975, the public knew her only as an archetypal Home Counties Tory Lady, more famous for her hats than for any outstanding talent: she had a rich businessman husband, sent her children to the most expensive private schools, owned houses in Kent and Chelsea, and sat in Parliament representing Finchley. As education Secretary she had made the headlines by cutting the provision of free school milk; but she had voiced no criticism of the policies which led to Heath's defeat. No one for a moment imagined that she would be Heath's successor, nor that she would become one of the most dominant Prime Ministers of the century. Yet almost overnight she reinvented herself. Journalists who set out to discover where she came from were amazed to find that she had grown up above a grocer's shop in Grantham. Within weeks of her becoming Tory leader, an entirely new image was in place, based around the now famous corner shop beside the Great North Road; the strict Methodist upbringing; and her father, the stern but saintly Alderman Roberts who taught her the 'Victorian values' - thrift, temperance, self-reliance, patriotism, and duty - which were the foundations of her future career. It is all true, so far as it goes; yet it is not the whole truth. Following her escape from Grantham to wartime Oxford, through her brief experience as a research chemist in Essex and her first political campaigns as a young Tory candidate in the safe Labour seat of Dartford in 1950 and 1951, to her marriage to Dennis Thatcher, her struggles as a young mother in the 1950s to win a seat in Parliament and her first steps as a junior minister in the early 1960s, he portrays an ambitious and determined woman ruthlessly distancing herself from her roots - until the moment in 1975 when they suddenly became a political asset.

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Review:

Love her or hate her, there is no escaping the impact that Margaret Thatcher has made upon post-war British Politics. The 1980s are indelibly marked as the Thatcher years, and her rise from Grantham grocer's daughter to Finchley MP in 1959, Leader of the Conservative Party by 1975, and Prime Minister by 1979 was as tenacious as it was controversial. Since being ousted from power, biographers have been busy reassessing her legacy. By far the most distinguished account to date is John Campbell's Margaret Thatcher. Volume One: The Grocer's Daughter. Campbell's credentials for the job are impeccable, having already written the acclaimed biography of Thatcher's great rival, Edward Heath, winner of the 1994 NCR Book Award. As he explains from the outset, this is not an authorised biography, but Thatcher's office made no attempt to prevent the reconstruction of Thatcher's life from her birth in Grantham to her entry into Downing Street. This is a blessing, as Campbell's immensely readable and even-handed book challenges the idealised myth of Thatcher's early life and indoctrination into the "Victorian values" of her Methodist father Alderman Roberts. According to Campbell, Thatcher reinvented herself as a wealthy Home Counties lady, through her difficult years at Oxford, marriage to Denis, and sexist responses from her party throughout her early years in Opposition. However, as her status as a "conviction politician" grew, and with the General Election of 1979 looming, she radically changed her image: "In place of the Home Counties Tory lady in a stripy hat, married to a rich husband, whose children had attended the most expensive private schools, she forced the media to redefine her as a battling meritocrat who had raised herself by hard work from a humble provincial background." Campbell's story is always compelling, his research meticulous, and his sweep of the political skulduggery of the 60s and 70s masterful. Margaret Thatcher is an absorbing story of the creation of a modern political myth. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"The best book yet written about Lady Thatcher." -"Daily Telegraph" "A fascinating account. Campbell's research is as exhaustive as it is meticulous." -"Observer" "Thorough, scholarly and fair-minded." -"Independent on Sunday" "A searching and beautifully written volume." -"Independent" "An exciting narrative...A triumph." -"Spectator" "From the Trade Paperback edition."

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