Margaret Thatcher: Volume One: The Grocers Daughter

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The first volume of the critically acclaimed, definitive biography of Margaret Thatcher. 'A fascinating account... Campbell's research is as exhaustive as it is meticulous' Observer When Margaret Thatcher unexpectedly emerged to challenge Edward Heath for the Conservative Party leadership in 1975, the public knew her only as the 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 and sat in Parliament for Finchley. 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, who taught her the 'Victorian values' which were the foundations of her subsequent career. In the first volume of the first full-scale biography of Margaret Thatcher since her fall from power - and the first thoroughly to explore her early life - John Campbell re-examines the mythology and suggests a more complex reality behind the idealised picture accepted by Lady Thatcher's early biographers. 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.

Reviews

The best book yet written about Lady Thatcher * Daily Telegraph *
A winner. Whatever your views on the grocer's daughter, I defy you not to enjoy it * Daily Mail *
'A triumph' * Spectator *
'A superbly researched biography... unlike so many others is neither hagiography nor hatchet-job, and probably gets closer to the truth than any... magnificently told' * Sunday Express *
'A fascinating account... Campbell's research is as exhaustive as it is meticulous' * Observer *

Author Bio

John Campbell is recognised as one of Britain's leading political biographers. In addition to Edward Heath, which won the NCR Award in 1994, his subjects have included Lloyd George (1977), F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead (1983), Roy Jenkins (1983) and Aneurin Bevan (1986). His most recent books are If Love Were All- The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George, and Pistols at Dawn, published by Jonathan Cape in June 2009. He is currently writing the authorised biography of Roy Jenkins.