Statecraft at one relatively lowly level is the craft of making the best of a bad job and although Mrs Thatcher, in this her latest, and possibly her last, major work, does not have much, or indeed anything, to say on this aspect of her subject, she certainly practised it, as any statesman worth his salt from time to time - even de Gaulle in Algeria - is bound to do. So there is no mention, for example, of the miserable settlement she had to negotiate, faute de mieux in Zimbabwe when she transferred power into the already bloodstained hands of President Mugabe. No, this is definitely not a book about that kind of statesmanship - the kind which amounts to little more than putting right the mistakes made by earlier statesmen - but rather a book about the kind of high principled statesmanship, aimed at imposing the morally right solution rather than merely the most expedient, of which she herself claims several historic triumphs: the first in the free world's victory over totalitarianism in the 50-year Cold War and the second in the conclusive victory of capitalism over socialism.

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