A ringside view of the Iron Lady
MARGARET THATCHER:
Power And Personality
by Jonathan Aitken
Bloomsbury, £ 20 ( RRP £ 25)
IWAS inclined not to like this book on the grounds that one 700- page volume about Margaret Thatcher by an Old Etonian was quite sufficient thank you very much.
That one volume on the 20th century’s greatest product of a grammar school was clearly Charles Moore’s definitive account, released very shortly after the Iron Lady’s death in the spring. But for people who wish to turn 700 pages of Thatcher into 1,400 pages, Jonathan Aitken’s version has its merits.
Aitken did indeed have a “ringside seat” on this great life and times, something Moore never claimed for his more scholarly and rigorously researched work. This is not to say Aitken did not do any research, he interviewed 90 people to augment material from his own diaries, just that Moore is very much the daddy on that particular score.
And if the Aitken book occasionally lapses into a proverbial minister for paperclips recounting his own role in epoch- defining events, that is made forgivable by the fascinating gossip he supplies and his entertaining, if conversational, writing style.
Because Aitken’s book is a personal recollection it is let off the hook of having to triple source every meaningful episode and carefully weigh rival accounts in the balance to arrive at the literary equivalent of the arithmetic mean of truth.
Instead we get a series of intense sketches of important episodes and a frequently idiosyncratic take. Right at the outset, for instance, he identifies “six characteristics ingrained in the life of Margaret Roberts the child that shaped the career of Margaret Thatcher the Prime Minister”.
Of these six Aitken tells us that four were positives and two negatives. The four good traits are identified as discipline, determination of character, forthrightness of expression and certainty of belief. The two negatives are said to be personal insecurity and lack of empathy.
Aitken is as one might expect a largely admiring bystander but is nonetheless capable of telling harsh truths as, for instance, in his assessment of her behaviour towards successor John Major as being “infinitely worse and far more destructive” than that of her predecessor Ted Heath towards her.
“Her denigration of Major was a bad blot on her record,” he concludes.
FREQUENT ringside seat moments are the best thing about the book and do not merely inform the story of her Downing Street years but Thatcher’s dotage too.
Aitken’s account of a post- power holiday stay by the Thatchers with Lord Pearson of Rannoch in the Highlands is very amusing. After hearing the house breakfasted at 9.30am compared to her habitual time of 7am she agrees to a “compromise” of 7.15am.
The account of this vacation also demonstrates the full extent of the Iron Lady’s anti- EU views. During an impromptu PMQs session with young house guests Thatcher sets out to give five reasons why Britain should leave the European Union.
Upon finishing it’s pointed out she has only given four. “You’re quite right,” she adds, “the fifth reason we should leave is that THEY STOLE OUR FISH!”