{"id":34494,"date":"2016-04-03T02:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34494"},"modified":"2020-08-07T09:36:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:36:02","slug":"terry-teachout-on-the-first-two-volumes-of-the-authorized-thatcher-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/04\/03\/terry-teachout-on-the-first-two-volumes-of-the-authorized-thatcher-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry Teachout on the first two volumes of the authorized Thatcher biography"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read the first volume of Charles Moore\u2019s authorized biography and I was impressed. I’m halfway through the second volume and I’m not enjoying it quite as much as the first. I think that’s a combination of the first volume covering the era I was most interested in (the 1960s and 70s, and the Falklands War) and the second volume covering a lot more of the domestic intricacies of British politics during the 1980s (an “inside baseball” view which I don’t find all that compelling). Terry Teachout<\/a> didn’t bog down in the middle of volume two, and reports that he’s very impressed with Moore’s work:<\/p>\n

Forgive the clich\u00e9, but I couldn\u2019t put either book down. I stayed up far too late two nights in a row in order to finish them both \u2014 and I\u2019m by no means addicted to political biographies, regardless of subject.<\/p>\n

A quarter-century after she left office, Thatcher remains one of the most polarizing figures in postwar history. Because of this, I don\u2019t doubt that many people will have no interest whatsoever in reading a multi-volume biography of her, least of all one whose tone is fundamentally sympathetic. That, however, would be a mistake. Not only does Moore go out of his way to portray Thatcher objectively, but Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography<\/em> is by any conceivable standard a major achievement, not least for the straightforward, beautifully self-effacing style in which it is written. It is, quite simply, a pleasure to read. Yes, it\u2019s detailed, at times forbiddingly so, but it is, after all, an \u201cofficial\u201d life, and the level of detail means that you don\u2019t have to know anything about the specific events discussed in the book to be able to understand at all times what Moore is talking about. I confess to having done some skipping, especially in the second volume, but that\u2019s because I expect to return to Margaret Thatcher<\/em> at least once more in years to come.<\/p>\n

One way that Moore leavens the loaf is by being witty, though never obtrusively so. His \u201cjokes\u201d are all bone-dry, and not a few of them consist of merely telling the truth, the best possible way of being funny. […] <\/p>\n

He also conveys Thatcher\u2019s exceedingly strong, often headstrong personality with perfect clarity and perfect honesty (or so, at any rate, it seems from a distance). At the same time, he puts that personality in perspective. It is impossible to read far in Margaret Thatcher<\/em> without realizing that no small part of what made more than a few of Thatcher\u2019s Tory colleagues refer to her as \u201cTBW,\u201d a universally understood acronym for \u201cThat Bloody Woman,\u201d was the mere fact that she was a woman \u2014 and a middle-class woman to boot. Sexual chauvinism and social snobbery worked against her from the start, not merely from the right but from the left as well (Moore provides ample corroborating evidence of the well-known fact that there is no snob like an intellectual snob). That she prevailed for so long is a tribute to the sheer force of her character. That she was finally booted from office by her fellow Tories says at least as much about them as it does about her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read the first volume of Charles Moore\u2019s authorized biography and I was impressed. I’m halfway through the second volume and I’m not enjoying it quite as much as the first. I think that’s a combination of the first volume covering the era I was most interested in (the 1960s and 70s, and the Falklands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,7,53],"tags":[1391,431,390,303],"class_list":["post-34494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-history","category-politics","tag-biography","tag-conservatism","tag-margaretthatcher","tag-sexism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Ym","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59386,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34494\/revisions\/59386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}