Margaret Thatcher: England’s Iron Lady
Patrick Allitt has been a professor of American History at Emory University since 1988, where he teaches courses on American intellectual, environmental, and religious history, as well as Victorian Britain and the Great Books. After earning an undergraduate degree at Oxford and a Ph.D. in American history at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Allitt held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Princeton. He is the author of seven books, including his most recent: A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism.
Overview
Margaret Thatcher was not the kind of person who becomes a Conservative prime minister. She was a grocer’s daughter from the insignificant town of Grantham, yet she rose to dominate the political life of a generation. In office from 1979 to 1991, she reversed the long decline of Britain that for three decades had seemed inevitable. Others feel quite differently. Beloved by President Reagan, hated by the British left, she intimidated most members even of her own party, and was more widely admired than liked. Britain today continues to bear the stamp of her work for good and ill.