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Elegantly written...what makes Brenda Maddox's biography so compelling is the interweaving of the personal and political. Perhaps the most rounded profile yet of this unique woman. -- Birmingham Post There are new insights...Maddox paints a vivid picture of the very different world of a provincial town in the 1930s. Equally vivid is the account of Thatcher's first attempt to enter parliament at the 1950 general election. -- Financial Times The story of Alderman Roberts's daughter may hardly be new but Maddox tells it with pace and verve...(she) is good, too, on Thatcher's Oxford career. This is a racily paced tale of what is essentially the private side of a public career. -- Anthony Howard, The Sunday Times A good read. Its descriptions of the affection between Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis and of the support he gave her are accurate and sympathetic. -- Norman Tebbit, Evening Standard

A good read. Its descriptions of the affection between Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis and of the support he gave her are accurate and sympathetic. * Norman Tebbit, Evening Standard * The story of Alderman Roberts's daughter may hardly be new but Maddox tells it with pace and verve...(she) is good, too, on Thatcher's Oxford career. This is a racily paced tale of what is essentially the private side of a public career. * Anthony Howard, The Sunday Times * There are new insights...Maddox paints a vivid picture of the very different world of a provincial town in the 1930s. Equally vivid is the account of Thatcher's first attempt to enter parliament at the 1950 general election. * Financial Times * Elegantly written...what makes Brenda Maddox's biography so compelling is the interweaving of the personal and political. Perhaps the most rounded profile yet of this unique woman. * Birmingham Post *

Elegantly written...what makes Brenda Maddox's biography so compelling is the interweaving of the personal and political. Perhaps the most rounded profile yet of this unique woman. - Birmingham Post There are new insights...Maddox paints a vivid picture of the very different world of a provincial town in the 1930s. Equally vivid is the account of Thatcher's first attempt to enter parliament at the 1950 general election. - Financial Times The story of Alderman Roberts's daughter may hardly be new but Maddox tells it with pace and verve...(she) is good, too, on Thatcher's Oxford career. This is a racily paced tale of what is essentially the private side of a public career. - Anthony Howard, The Sunday Times A good read. Its descriptions of the affection between Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis and of the support he gave her are accurate and sympathetic. - Norman Tebbit, Evening Standard

The challenge facing any biographer of Margaret Thatcher is that people either love her or hate her - she's not the sort of person about whom it's possible to express indifference. But a biographer has to show the complex, human side of her subject, not simply recount that person's faults or virtues. So there was every chance that Maddox, a noted biographer who has written lives of Rosalind Franklin and Nora Joyce among others, was going to offend either her subject's admirers or detractors - or probably both - with this biography. Luckily, perhaps, Lady Thatcher isn't a very complicated personality. The very characteristics that many people admire and that made her so successful - her ambition, her single-mindedness, her enormous self-belief - were also the ones that ultimately led to her downfall. Maddox has wisely chosen to concentrate not on her subject's political beliefs or the political events that dominated her premiership (though of course these are discussed) but on her personal life: her childhood, her relationship with her parents and family; her marriage and friendships. What emerges is a portrait of a highly intelligent, focused and capable woman who was determined to succeed from a very early age. It may be news to no one that she developed a reputation for bossiness early on in life; more unexpected is the picture Maddox paints of a woman capable of great kindness and thoughtfulness towards those she genuinely cared about. For those who think they already know everything they need or want to know about Lady Thatcher, this will come as a surprisingly enjoyable and pacy read. Maddox tells the tale lightly, and the story is peppered with personal recollections of those who knew Lady Thatcher as a child and an adult. There are a few revelations, too; most people won't have known that this 'literal-minded' (to use her own description) woman was a very talented pianist, or that the great show she made of being an ordinary housewife wasn't entirely an invention for the media; she really did continue to cook her husband's meals even while she was prime minister. Perhaps this isn't the most in-depth biography Maddox has every written; its tie-in with a TV series suggests it's aimed at a wider readership than her other biographies would find. But this shouldn't detract from her achievement in producing an engaging and likeable book on an individual most of us thought we knew everything about already. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Brenda Maddox is an award-winning biographer whose work has been translated into ten languages. NORA: A BIOGRAPHY OF NORA JOYCE won the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Her life of D.H. Lawrence won the Whitbread Biography Award and GEORGE'S GHOSTS, on the married life of W.B. Yeats, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

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