The Path to Power - Softcover

Reseña del editor

Here, Thatcher writes about her personal life, the formation of her character and values, and the training and experiences which led to her 1979 election victory.

Contraportada

In 'The Downing Street Years' Margaret Thatcher gave her own account of her prime ministership from 1979 to 1990. Now, in 'The Path to Power', she writes for the first time about her personal life, about the formation of her character and values, and about the training and experiences which led to the 1979 election victory.

She was born and brought up in the Lincolnshire market town of Grantham, where her father became Mayor. The degree to which she imbibed at his knee the virtues of self-reliance, thrift and respectful neighbourliness is revealed in this book as never before. She went to Oxford, worked as a research chemist, was courted by and married Denis Thatcher. Then, at a time when there was no more than a handful of women in the House of Commons, she became an MP, Education Secretary, and eventually, in 1975, Leader of the Opposition.

She writes explicitly about her feelings towards Ted Heath as she sat uncomfortably in his Cabinets, about her rethinking of Conservatism under the inspiration of Keith Joseph, about the Winter of Discontent, the fall of the Callaghan government and the country she inherited in 1979.

All this would be quite sufficient to make a riveting memoir. But she also write for the first time about her feelings as she left Downing Street in 1990 and about the course Britain, Europe and the world have taken since then. In our uncertain and increasingly rudderless world, here is a woman who knows what she thinks and why she thinks it, a leader as formidable as ever she was during her Downing Street years. The voice which the world listened to so intently then speaks again now in these pages.