Omega
Post by beth on Nov 12, 2011 14:05:58 GMT -5
The new Vanity Fair (December 2011) is on the news stands now and has a number of very good articles. One, inparticular is a spread with abundant photos about Margaret Thatcher. Like her or hate her, it's interesting. Here's a blurb but do pick up a copy of VF for much more.
The Invincible Mrs. Thatcher
With Britain’s Tories back in power—and a biopic starring Meryl Streep on its way—the career of Margaret Thatcher is newly resonant. A conservative revolutionary, she prefigured, then partnered with, Ronald Reagan, worshipping “real men” as she went where no woman had, never losing a national election (or a war), and defining an era. Twenty years after Thatcher’s retirement, her biographer Charles Moore re-assesses the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill, one who forged a legacy that will long survive her.
ot long after she resigned as prime minister, in 1990, Margaret Thatcher began to write her memoirs. I met her at a dinner party and asked her what she would call them. The famous blue eyes flashed at me: “Undefeated!” she declared.
This expressed a sober arithmetical fact. Uniquely at that time in British politics, Margaret Thatcher had won three general elections in a row as party leader and had never lost any. Before she had the chance to contest her fourth, she was deposed by members of Parliament from her own party in a coup. Yet, even in that contest, the pure numbers were on her side. In 1990, when the Conservative Party staged a challenge to her leadership, she won more legislators’ votes than her main rival, but not enough to avoid a second ballot. Her Cabinet colleagues convinced her that she would be humiliated in the runoff, and she resigned.
In the end, those memoirs were given a more boring title (The Downing Street Years), but that one-word exclamation succinctly expressed the great Thatcher myth of invincibility. And in a sense it was true. Much more than any other modern British politician—particularly Conservative politicians accustomed to swimming against a leftish cultural tide—Margaret Thatcher fought, and Margaret Thatcher won. Her victory was so great that it changed her political opponents—the Labour Party—as much as it changed her own party. Her defeat of the left made Tony Blair possible. And today, with David Cameron having finally led the Conservatives back to No. 10 Downing Street and wrestling with a massive inherited government deficit, as Mrs. Thatcher did 30 years earlier, all the old debates have become relevant once more.
www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/12/margaret-thatcher-201112
The Invincible Mrs. Thatcher
With Britain’s Tories back in power—and a biopic starring Meryl Streep on its way—the career of Margaret Thatcher is newly resonant. A conservative revolutionary, she prefigured, then partnered with, Ronald Reagan, worshipping “real men” as she went where no woman had, never losing a national election (or a war), and defining an era. Twenty years after Thatcher’s retirement, her biographer Charles Moore re-assesses the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill, one who forged a legacy that will long survive her.
ot long after she resigned as prime minister, in 1990, Margaret Thatcher began to write her memoirs. I met her at a dinner party and asked her what she would call them. The famous blue eyes flashed at me: “Undefeated!” she declared.
This expressed a sober arithmetical fact. Uniquely at that time in British politics, Margaret Thatcher had won three general elections in a row as party leader and had never lost any. Before she had the chance to contest her fourth, she was deposed by members of Parliament from her own party in a coup. Yet, even in that contest, the pure numbers were on her side. In 1990, when the Conservative Party staged a challenge to her leadership, she won more legislators’ votes than her main rival, but not enough to avoid a second ballot. Her Cabinet colleagues convinced her that she would be humiliated in the runoff, and she resigned.
In the end, those memoirs were given a more boring title (The Downing Street Years), but that one-word exclamation succinctly expressed the great Thatcher myth of invincibility. And in a sense it was true. Much more than any other modern British politician—particularly Conservative politicians accustomed to swimming against a leftish cultural tide—Margaret Thatcher fought, and Margaret Thatcher won. Her victory was so great that it changed her political opponents—the Labour Party—as much as it changed her own party. Her defeat of the left made Tony Blair possible. And today, with David Cameron having finally led the Conservatives back to No. 10 Downing Street and wrestling with a massive inherited government deficit, as Mrs. Thatcher did 30 years earlier, all the old debates have become relevant once more.
www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/12/margaret-thatcher-201112
