Preface
At his trial, Socrates famously said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. He had not, of course, met Margaret Thatcher. From childhood, through the whole of her life until the infirmities of old age prevented her, Mrs Thatcher worked without cease. For her, work had a semi-religious significance, and it was the only way of life she knew. Even after she had left politics, she would always say ‘There’s so much to do!’ She hated the fact that she no longer had the chance to do it.
Such people do not look back. Even as they act, they do not pause to observe how they are acting. They focus always on their goals, and have a horror of wasting time. Almost the only sense in which Margaret Thatcher examined her own life was to criticize her conduct on a particular occasion – such-and-such a speech had not been good enough, she had not prepared herself properly for such-and-such a meeting. She did this out of a puritanical desire for self-improvement, to make sure that she performed better next time. She hardly ever sat down to reflect upon the past. It is true that, when she became the leader of the Conservative Party, she ransacked her memory for the small-town stories and paternal precepts which were the foundations of her beliefs, but she did so in order to advance her cause, not in any spirit of autobiographical inquiry. Much of her astonishing energy derived from this lack of detachment: if she had spent time looking back, she would have had less time to press forward. Just by watching Mrs Thatcher in action, noting what the novelist Alan Hollinghurst (in
The Line of Beauty
) called her ‘gracious scuttle’, her hurrying gait as she moved from meeting to meeting, you could see that hers was a life with no space for self-examination.
Once she had left office in November 1990, however, Lady Thatcher (as she then became) was forced to think about her own story. Publishers were knocking on her door, clamouring for her memoirs. She did not really want to write them, because she always disliked personal disclosure. Indeed, she had no real idea how to set about such a task. She was utterly unlike, for example, Winston Churchill, for whom the books he wrote about what hehad done were almost as important as the deeds themselves. But, furious at the way she had been forced from office, she did want to set out the accomplishments of her eleven and a half years as prime minister. She wanted to produce a book which vindicated her beliefs. Her publishers, of course, were more interested in her intimate memories and juicy revelations, so it was a mighty task for her loyal and able team of literary assistants to square this circle. Members of the team recall how difficult it was to persuade Lady Thatcher to come up with the telling anecdotes, personal touches and clear narrative on which good memoirs depend. She found it hard to concentrate on the past, and she disliked the whole idea of revealing anything which had taken place privately. And although her memoirs were written well before the decline in her mental powers which became apparent by the end of the twentieth century, she was not naturally accurate in the account she gave of her own life. Her memory, so amazingly retentive when it came to mastering the facts and figures of government, failed when asked to pin down the details of her own history. She had been too busy living it to have recorded it in her own mind. The two volumes of memoirs which emerged,
The Downing Street Years
and
The Path to Power
, were highly professional accounts. They skilfully replicated on the printed page the tartness which Mrs Thatcher often used in oral expression but which tended to desert her when she wrote things down formally. They coaxed out of her much more than she would ever have produced if she had worked alone. They represented her thoughts and attitudes authentically. But they could never quite overcome the problem that they were the autobiography of someone who
At his trial, Socrates famously said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. He had not, of course, met Margaret Thatcher. From childhood, through the whole of her life until the infirmities of old age prevented her, Mrs Thatcher worked without cease. For her, work had a semi-religious significance, and it was the only way of life she knew. Even after she had left politics, she would always say ‘There’s so much to do!’ She hated the fact that she no longer had the chance to do it.
Such people do not look back. Even as they act, they do not pause to observe how they are acting. They focus always on their goals, and have a horror of wasting time. Almost the only sense in which Margaret Thatcher examined her own life was to criticize her conduct on a particular occasion – such-and-such a speech had not been good enough, she had not prepared herself properly for such-and-such a meeting. She did this out of a puritanical desire for self-improvement, to make sure that she performed better next time. She hardly ever sat down to reflect upon the past. It is true that, when she became the leader of the Conservative Party, she ransacked her memory for the small-town stories and paternal precepts which were the foundations of her beliefs, but she did so in order to advance her cause, not in any spirit of autobiographical inquiry. Much of her astonishing energy derived from this lack of detachment: if she had spent time looking back, she would have had less time to press forward. Just by watching Mrs Thatcher in action, noting what the novelist Alan Hollinghurst (in
The Line of Beauty
) called her ‘gracious scuttle’, her hurrying gait as she moved from meeting to meeting, you could see that hers was a life with no space for self-examination.
Once she had left office in November 1990, however, Lady Thatcher (as she then became) was forced to think about her own story. Publishers were knocking on her door, clamouring for her memoirs. She did not really want to write them, because she always disliked personal disclosure. Indeed, she had no real idea how to set about such a task. She was utterly unlike, for example, Winston Churchill, for whom the books he wrote about what hehad done were almost as important as the deeds themselves. But, furious at the way she had been forced from office, she did want to set out the accomplishments of her eleven and a half years as prime minister. She wanted to produce a book which vindicated her beliefs. Her publishers, of course, were more interested in her intimate memories and juicy revelations, so it was a mighty task for her loyal and able team of literary assistants to square this circle. Members of the team recall how difficult it was to persuade Lady Thatcher to come up with the telling anecdotes, personal touches and clear narrative on which good memoirs depend. She found it hard to concentrate on the past, and she disliked the whole idea of revealing anything which had taken place privately. And although her memoirs were written well before the decline in her mental powers which became apparent by the end of the twentieth century, she was not naturally accurate in the account she gave of her own life. Her memory, so amazingly retentive when it came to mastering the facts and figures of government, failed when asked to pin down the details of her own history. She had been too busy living it to have recorded it in her own mind. The two volumes of memoirs which emerged,
The Downing Street Years
and
The Path to Power
, were highly professional accounts. They skilfully replicated on the printed page the tartness which Mrs Thatcher often used in oral expression but which tended to desert her when she wrote things down formally. They coaxed out of her much more than she would ever have produced if she had worked alone. They represented her thoughts and attitudes authentically. But they could never quite overcome the problem that they were the autobiography of someone who
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