No publication understood the Thatcher project better than The Spectator. We backed her for the leadership in 1975 when no other national publication would. We understood her opportunities, foibles and genius when many of our rivals were baffled by this coarse-sounding lady and her popular appeal. We have put together 21 essays from the period into our first-ever ebook: Margaret Thatcher in The Spectator 1975 – 1990. It’s available today on the Kindle, for just 99p.
It begins with Patrick Cosgrave advocating Thatcher as Tory leader, then gives a six-month and one-year progress report. Ferdinand Mount describes the uneasiness that followed the 1979 triumph. Then, as now, The Spectator was no a Tory fanzine and we gave vent to critical voices. In 1979, Germaine Greer sums up the concern of the left – and what they saw as the quasi-religious pursuit of money, for its own sake. Ex-editor Alexander Chancellor writes of her Falklands victory and why Labour made her 1983 re-election inevitable.
Baroness Thatcher’s official biographer and former Spectator editor Charles Moore explains the importance of the 1984 EU rebate, before tackling the Brighton bombing and the IRA. Ludovic Kennedy illustrates Thatcher’s personality — a combination of charm, abrasiveness and artificiality — while psychologists Ian Deary and Simon Wessely explain a phenomenon of people suffering from dementia who have forgotten their own names still know Mrs Thatcher’s.
We have pieces on the ‘housewife superstar’ phenomenon and the difficult end to her premiership — or the choice between supply, demand and the Devil. Auberon Waugh agrees, describing the poll tax problem as ‘trying to get the mad broody chicken off her addled eggs’.
On the lady and her ideology, T.E. Utley attacks the ‘monstrous invention known as Thatcherism’ and Alexandra Artley explains how Thatcher made television work for her. David Willetts offers his lessons having worked for The Lady and Nicholas Garland, author of many Spectator covers, recalls how tough she was to pin down.
A shortened print version of this will come free with The Spectator tomorrow. If you don’t own a Kindle device, you can read still read book on the Kindle app for iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac, Android and BlackBerry. We hope you enjoy this – hopefully the first of many – Spectator ebook.
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