The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Margaret Thatcher Volume Two

Margaret Thatcher Volume Two

The Iron Lady

Summary

The first volume of John Campbell's biography of Margaret Thatcher was described by Frank Johnson in the Daily Telegraph as 'much the best book yet written about Lady Thatcher'. That volume, The Grocer's Daughter, described Mrs Thatcher's childhood and early career up until the 1979 General Election which carried her into Downing Street.

This second volume covers the whole eleven and a half years of her momentous premiership. Thirteen years after her removal from power, this is the first comprehensive and fully researched study of the Thatcher Government from its hesitant beginning to its dramatic end. Campbell draws on the mass of memoirs and diaries of Mrs Thatcher's colleagues, aides, advisers and rivals, as well as on original material from the Ronald Reagan archive, shedding fascinating new light on the Reagan-Thatcher 'special relationship', and on dozens of interviews.

The Iron Lady will confirm John Campbell's Margaret Thatcher as one of the greatest political biographies of recent times.

Reviews

  • John Campbell succeeds brilliantly with this second volume of his biography of Britain's first woman prime minister. His account - compelling, often exhilarating and, in its closing pages, genuinely moving - portrays Thatcher's political career as a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare
    John Willman, Financial Times

About the author

John Campbell

John Campbell is the author of many biographies including one of Edward Heath, for which he won the 1994 NCR award, The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, from Grocer's Daughter to Iron Lady and, most recently, Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown. He is married and lives in Kent.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more