A vintage tale of Thatcher, Reagan and some truly great wines

Poor Old Girl. The final act may not have been sanglante, but as the third volume of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher makes clear, it was sad. It may seem unwise to expend great praise on a contemporary book before time has had a chance to lend perspective: not in this case. Time’s verdict can be anticipated with confidence. Boswell apart — sui generis — this might be the finest biography in the language.

Alas, the final volume is also a story of decline. It did not help that the Lady was sacked with as little ceremony as a cleaning woman guilty of plundering the gin bottle. But a more dignified exit would still have hurt.  Until her health declined, she was producing more adrenaline than she could consume: constantly feeling a gnawing frustration that she was no longer at the centre of events. Charles Powell said ‘she never had a happy day after being ousted from office’.  Charles Moore doubts whether that was literally true, but even if there were hours when she could distract herself, the pain was never far from the surface. In last week’s Spectator, Charles Moore wrote that in politics, Boris Johnson was only suited to the top job. The same was true of Mrs Thatcher. Her period as education secretary under Ted Heath was unmemorable. She did nothing to disrupt the leftists’ Gramscian long march through the educational institutions (a neglect which persisted during her premiership). As leader of the opposition, she was often out-gunned by Jim Callaghan.

The prospect of a Thatcher premiership filled many Tories with foreboding, especially as a failure by her could open the gates to the Bennite left. I have never come across anyone who can claim to have predicted her glorious emergence as a world–historical figure.