Skip to footer

Margaret Thatcher authorized two-volume biography

A new two-part biography of the former prime minister by Charles Moore was approved by Thatcher for publication after her death.

|
Gerald Penny/AP
Margaret Thatcher was the first female prime minister of Britain and the longest-serving British leader of the 20th century.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Margaret Thatcher authorized a biography to be published after her death. The first volume, "Not for Turning," has been written by author Charles Moore and will be released soon.

Thatcher commissioned the biography in 1997 and gave Moore access to many of her papers, as well as granting him exclusive interviews, said the biography's publisher, Penguin Books.

Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin, will publish the first of two volumes in the biography immediately after Thatcher’s funeral, which is scheduled for April 17. Moore is still working on the second volume, which will be titled “Herself Alone.” The two volumes together will be titled “Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography.”

“Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher immediately supersedes all earlier books written about her,” Allen Lane publishing director Stuart Profitt said in a statement. “I was astonished at how much Moore says which has never been public before.... It gives unparalleled insight into her early life and formation, especially through her extensive correspondence with her sister, which Moore is the first author to draw on.”

Moore is a former editor for the Daily Telegraph. According to Penguin, Thatcher had not read his manuscript before her death.

Moore’s work isn’t the only examination of Thatcher that will be arriving in bookstores. A book by her speechwriter, Robin Harris, is also scheduled to come out later in April. Meanwhile, sales of Thatcher’s memoirs skyrocketed following her death, with Amazon estimating that sales of her book “The Downing Street Years” rose more than 100,000 percent.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Margaret Thatcher authorized two-volume biography
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0409/Margaret-Thatcher-authorized-two-volume-biography
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe