The Many Lives of Margaret Thatcher

From the moment she stormed the Tory leadership in 1975, books and articles on Margaret Thatcher have gushed like a torrent from the printing press. The discerning Thatcher scholar can now choose from more than thirty biographies, several hundred books and articles, a movie adaptation, and numerous dramas and documentaries. The literature on ‘Thatcher’s Britain’ is rich, sophisticated and methodologically diverse, drawing not just on history and political science but on cultural theory, cognitive psychology, geography, media studies, criminology, the natural sciences and queer theory. It is an irony of history that, more than a quarter of a century after she left office, Thatcher studies stands as one of Britain’s last remaining heavy industries. Keeping abreast of all this would tax even Thatcher’s legendary stamina; yet such was the task confronting Tim Bale in assembling this outstanding new collection. Aside from the editor’s general introduction, the four volumes (part of a series offering Critical Evaluations of Key Political Leaders) contain no writing that is new. Instead, they bring together some of the best work of the last forty years, ranging from the pages of Marxism Today to the writings of Margaret Thatcher herself. The breadth of coverage is remarkable, and a tribute to Bale’s grasp of multiple disciplines. With contributions by Marxists, feminists, Thatcherites, ‘Wets’, post-colonialists, hagiographers and haters, the volumes range across topics as diverse as privatisation, terrorism, media relations, immigration, foreign affairs and Thatcher’s unlikely appropriation as a gay icon. The selection, Bale cheerfully acknowledges, is consciously ‘eclectic’, directed at ‘readers in a whole host of academic disciplines and none at all’ (I. 1). Aside from Thatcher herself, no single author features more than once, and no book or collection contributes more than one chapter. The result is a boxed set of scholarly greatest hits (Now That’s What I Call Thatcher?), pairing stadium anthems by Andrew Gamble, Stuart Hall and Shirley Robin Letwin with equally rewarding new ‘finds’

Appropriation · Art · Art history · Irony · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Romance · Sociology · Tribute · History · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

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