Margaret Thatcher

Professor Sir David Cannadine is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University and General Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is one of the world's best-known historians and historical biographers, and an expert on Churchill and political leadership, and was President of the British Academy from 2017 to 2021. The author or editor of thirty books, David Cannadine is also a regular broadcaster on radio and television. His most recent publications include Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (2018), The Undivided Past (2013), and George V: the Unexpected King (2014), as well as two series of Prime Ministers' Props for BBC Radio 4 (2016 and 2018).

Few modern women have had as great a political impact as Margaret Hilda Roberts, the grocer's daughter from Grantham who, as Margaret Thatcher, became Britain's first woman prime minister. The longest serving British premier of the twentieth century, Mrs Thatcher has been the subject of both adulation and vilification. In Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy, the leading historian Sir David Cannadine sets Margaret Thatcher in the context of recent British history.

With elegance, wit, and historical insight, Cannadine charts Mrs Thatcher's upbringing and influences, her political career and life after politics, the impact of her policies, and her personal reputation and political legacy. The book also features a glossary of key terms, a chronology, a 'dramatis personae' of significant figures of the period, and a guide to further reading.

Written by one of our foremost international historians, it is an essential work for anyone interested in the life and work of a towering-and often controversial-figure in modern British history, as well as students, academics, and researchers in the fields of modern history and politics.

This concise, lively, and authoritative biography examines the life of Margaret Thatcher and sets it in the context of recent British history. Written by leading international historian David Cannadine, it covers her early life, political career, life after politics, impact, and legacy.