Margaret Thatcher
The Authorized Biography: Single-volume Centenary Edition
Published on 18. September 2025
Book
Hardback
1104 pages
978-0-241-68767-3 (ISBN)
Description
'Utterly gripped' Hilary Mantel
Charles Moore's bestselling and definitive biography of Britain's first female Prime Minister, now in a single volume
With unparalleled authority and dramatic detail, Charles Moore's definitive biography of Margaret Thatcher presents the whole history of the woman who transformed Britain and the world. With unique access to Thatcher's private and governmental papers and extensive interviews with her, her family, and colleagues, Moore gives readers an unsurpassed portrait of her early years, her rise to power and her revolutionary eleven and a half years as Prime Minister. He guides us through her economic battles to her zenith at the Falklands crisis, her extraordinary three election victories and her dramatic final days in office.
Moore describes her sometimes combative relationships with senior colleagues - especially Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Michael Heseltine - who contributed both to her rise and to her fall. He portrays the strength and importance of her relationship with Queen Elizabeth II, while offering a candid account of their difficulties. He also brilliantly conveys Thatcher's pivotal role on the world stage - including in the ending of the Cold War, the fierce battle over the future of Europe, and her relationships with Reagan, Gorbachev, Bush, Kohl and Mandela. He shows how she was a pioneer - of privatization, which has since been copied all over the world, and as the first leader of a major state to understand climate change. He explains how 'Thatcherism' became a set of ideas both welcomed and contested across the world.
Throughout, Moore illuminates the complexities of Thatcher's character - her determination, boldness and the challenges she faced as a woman in a male-dominated political world - but is by no means uncritical. He shows what was remarkable about her and what was infuriating, her extraordinary strengths and sometimes surprising vulnerability.
This edition, published to mark the centenary of Thatcher's birth, combines the insights of the original three volumes, providing a comprehensive portrait of one of the most influential figures of her age, whose life reminds us today of the power of great leadership.
Charles Moore's bestselling and definitive biography of Britain's first female Prime Minister, now in a single volume
With unparalleled authority and dramatic detail, Charles Moore's definitive biography of Margaret Thatcher presents the whole history of the woman who transformed Britain and the world. With unique access to Thatcher's private and governmental papers and extensive interviews with her, her family, and colleagues, Moore gives readers an unsurpassed portrait of her early years, her rise to power and her revolutionary eleven and a half years as Prime Minister. He guides us through her economic battles to her zenith at the Falklands crisis, her extraordinary three election victories and her dramatic final days in office.
Moore describes her sometimes combative relationships with senior colleagues - especially Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Michael Heseltine - who contributed both to her rise and to her fall. He portrays the strength and importance of her relationship with Queen Elizabeth II, while offering a candid account of their difficulties. He also brilliantly conveys Thatcher's pivotal role on the world stage - including in the ending of the Cold War, the fierce battle over the future of Europe, and her relationships with Reagan, Gorbachev, Bush, Kohl and Mandela. He shows how she was a pioneer - of privatization, which has since been copied all over the world, and as the first leader of a major state to understand climate change. He explains how 'Thatcherism' became a set of ideas both welcomed and contested across the world.
Throughout, Moore illuminates the complexities of Thatcher's character - her determination, boldness and the challenges she faced as a woman in a male-dominated political world - but is by no means uncritical. He shows what was remarkable about her and what was infuriating, her extraordinary strengths and sometimes surprising vulnerability.
This edition, published to mark the centenary of Thatcher's birth, combines the insights of the original three volumes, providing a comprehensive portrait of one of the most influential figures of her age, whose life reminds us today of the power of great leadership.
Reviews / Votes
The definitive work of British political biography this century. Margaret Thatcher - published in a special centenary edition in a single volume - is not merely authoritative, but epic, capturing the sheer bravura oddness of Britain's most consequential postwar prime minister and the lost world from which she came -- Tom McTague * New Statesman, Books of the Year * A superb, definitive, and informative distillation of the life and times of the Iron Lady. -- Colin Shindler * Jerusalem Post * Excellent ... This book, a condensed version of Moore's three-volume biography, makes it possible to appreciate her achievement -- Lord Baker of Dorking * Evening Standard * Moore's great gift is his ability to make Thatcher's story fresh again, and above all to remind us of how odd she was ... The thoroughness of the research, the hundreds of interviews, and above all the access to her family and friends, enabled [him] to produce a multifaceted picture of a compelling life ... Although this is very much a narrative biography, it is also a book about ideas: where they come from, how they affect people and how they get shaped into policies ... one of the definitive books about Britain in the late twentieth century -- Anne Applebaum * Daily Telegraph * Moore has produced a biography so masterly - so packed with fascinating detail, with such a strong narrative drive, propelled by a central character who is at the same time both very bizarre and very conventional - that it comes as close as biography can come to being a work of art ... One of the many strengths of his book is that it never loses sight of just how unusual she was, in terms of both her personal psychology and her place in public life ... This book is a triumph of diligence [and] of narrative art and human understanding, at its centre a peculiar force of nature, never to be repeated -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * One of the great biographical achievements of our times -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times * Moore's project is a study of detailed depth, and fine and transparent judgements, which rises to the largeness of a figure and a time that were of world significance -- John Lloyd * Financial Times * One of the most thrilling, comprehensive, fair-minded and elegantly written biographies of modern times. It is full of complex argument, and a very large cast, but it is a joy to read -- Andrew Marr * New Statesman * Reviewers are supposed never to use the word "definitive" about a history book or biography, but with Charles Moore's life of Margaret Thatcher, one has no other option. ... an absolute masterpiece of the biographer's art -- Andrew Roberts * Daily Telegraph * This is a magnificent political biography which takes its place next to Robert Blake's Disraeli and Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson on the highest level ... extraordinarily compelling -- Philip Hensher * Spectator *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 168 mm
Thickness: 55 mm
Weight
1420 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-68767-3 (9780241687673)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Charles Moore | Daniel J. Collings
Margaret Thatcher
The Authorized Biography: Single-volume Centenary Edition
E-Book
09/2025
Penguin
€14.99
Available for download
Persons
Charles Moore (Author)
Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. He was created Lord Moore of Etchingham in 2020.
The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in 2013, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and Political Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.
Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. He was created Lord Moore of Etchingham in 2020.
The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in 2013, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and Political Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.