Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three: Herself Alone

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Description

'One of the great biographical achievements of our times' (Sunday Times), Charles Moore's bestselling and definitive biography of Britain's first female Prime Minister reaches its climax with the story of her zenith and her fall 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.

Reviews

Moore has finally completed one of the most thrilling, comprehensive, fair-minded and elegantly written biographies of modern times. It is full of complex argument, and a very large cast, but it is a joy to read. -- Andrew Marr * New Statesman *

Reviewers are supposed never to use the word "definitive" about a history book or biograph, but with Charles Moore's life of Margaret Thatcher, of which this is the triumphant last volume, one has no other option. ... an absolute masterpiece of the biographer's art.

-- Andrew Roberts * Daily Telegraph *
Moore's Margaret Thatcher is one of the truly great biographies. Throughout the three volumes it has been comprehensive and subtle, breaking new ground while being surefooted on familiar terrain. He provides a portrait of Thatcher - her anxiousness and her certainty, her strength and her frailty - that is surprising and fresh while still convincing. This volume completes a historical masterpiece. -- Daniel Finkelstein * The Times *
Not merely the authorized biography, Moore's is the definitive biography of Thatcher, and perhaps one of the definitive books about Britain in the late twentieth century. -- Anne Applebaum * New York Review of Books *
This is a magnificent political biography which takes its place next to Robert Blake's Disraeli and Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson on the highest level. Outstanding... superb... extraordinarily compelling. -- Philip Hensher * Spectator *

Author Bio

Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in 2013, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and Political Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.