Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography; From Grantham to the Falklands

Thatcher's official biographer, Moore (columnist, Daily Telegraph) divides this first volume of his two-volume biography into three parts: "The Approach, 1925–1959," "Parliament, 1959–1979," and "Power, 1979–1982." While much of Thatcher's life is already known, Moore goes deeper and reveals new details. For example, he had access to over 150 letters from Margaret Roberts (before she met and married Denis Thatcher) to her sister, Muriel, relating a young woman's obsession with appearance and discussing several beaus. Married in late 1951, mother of twins in 1953, and called to the bar in 1954, Thatcher was elected Conservative MP in 1959. Moore describes a nervous breakdown by Denis Thatcher in 1964, when he may have considered divorce. Always the ambitious, determined woman in a man's world, Thatcher emerges here as lacking emotional intelligence, a failing for which she paid a price. Moore writes fluidly, with relative objectivity (he is known as a conservative journalist), and incorporates a large number of quotations. Thatcher did not see what he wrote; the book's publication followed her death.