Acknowledgements
First, I must thank the late Lady Thatcher for giving me the opportunity to write this book. The offer to be her authorized biographer came as a complete surprise, but it was an honour which I could not refuse. She was as good as her word in providing me the complete access, in so many forms – including interviews and the sight of all her papers – which she had promised.
From her offer, help from all other members of her family flowed. I talked extensively to the late Sir Denis Thatcher. Sir Mark Thatcher and Carol Thatcher have both been interviewed for the book and have kindly helped me with information whenever asked.
Lady Thatcher’s elder sister (her only sibling), Mrs Muriel Cullen, had never spoken publicly before, beyond one brief press interview many years ago. We met for two substantial conversations before she died. In addition, and with assistance from her son Andrew, she allowed me to read the large and previously completely unknown collection of letters which Margaret wrote to her as a young woman. From the way the letters were piled in old cases and bags in the attic, I formed the impression that no one had re-read them since Muriel first received them. This collection is a treasure trove which gives a unique account of the private life of Margaret Roberts. I was further helped by talk with Mrs Cullen’s daughter Jane Mayes, who also furnished me with family photographs. At all times, the Cullen family have shown me great kindness. I particularly appreciate it, because they are people who dislike publicity. Andrew Cullen would much rather be working on his farm. After so much time amid the clashing egos of Westminster, I found this very sympathetic.
Lady Thatcher always managed to command the loyalty of able and efficient personal staff, and they have been immeasurably valuable to me. I think particularly of Mrs Cynthia Crawford, the legendary ‘Crawfie’, who was rarely far from her boss’s side for more than thirty years, Mark Worthington, her long-standing private secretary, Gilly Penrose, until recently her personal assistant, and Kate Sawyer, one of the wonderful carers who made so much difference to her declining years. Julian Seymour, the director of Lady Thatcher’s private office, has been the best possible friend I could have had in my endeavours – decisive, funny, resourceful and, when needed, irascible. It was Julian who first conveyed the idea of the biography to me, and it is he who has stuck with me and it from the first.
It was one thing, however, for Lady Thatcher to have the idea, and quite another for me to turn it into something that could be published. For this to happen I depended first on my wise agent, Gillon Aitken, who has looked after me ever since, and then on Penguin, who accepted it. The man who commissioned it there was Andrew Rosenheim, who took a big punt at a time when Margaret Thatcher was much more out of fashion than she is now. The man who succeeded him was and is Stuart Proffitt, the greatest, best educated and most honourable editor in British publishing. Stuart has proved an admirable midwife after a much more than elephantine pregnancy.
There are two main, enormous collections of Thatcher papers. Her personal and political papers are deposited with the Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge, which has created a dedicated Thatcher archive to house them. It may give a sense of their scale to consider that, if I lived to be a hundred, and did no other work, I would still not be able to read everything that is there. I am most grateful to Dr Allen Packwood, the director of the Churchill archives, and, above all, to the Thatcher archivist, Andrew Riley. Andrew is one of the two people in the world who know the most about Margaret Thatcher, and his thoroughness, efficiency, good humour and active interest in his subject are beyond praise. This work would have been impossible without him. I should also like to thank his right-hand archivist, Sophie Bridges, and all his staff.
The other person who knows the most about Lady Thatcher is not me, but Christopher Collins. He is the editor of www.margaretthatcher.org, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website. This pioneering enterprise collates and publishes online everything that she ever said in public, much that she said in private and relevant documents from all over the world. It revolutionizes the study of contemporary history, and will soon be copied everywhere. Nothing is too much for Dr Collins, except the tendency of others to throw away Thatcher papers. To them, he is unforgiving. For me, he is the fount of knowledge.
The government papers, of course, are also vast in scope. Most of those covered in this volume have now been released to the National Archives at Kew. I studied the great bulk of them, however, before they were released, in Whitehall, under the sympathetic protection of Tessa Sterling, Head of Official Histories at the Cabinet Office, and Sally Falk, Deputy Head. Sally, in particular, has been my constant guide for nine years. Neither has lost her patience, even when we all had to move from Admiralty Arch to the new home in the Treasury. I must also salute Chris Grindall, now retired, who brought me up so many files from the distant bunkers beneath. I have greatly profited from working in close proximity to various official historians, including Sir Stephen Wall, Ian Beesley, Gill Bennett and Rodney Lowe. I am also grateful for the wisdom of Patrick Salmon.
The cooperation of the Cabinet Office was offered to me, at Lady Thatcher’s request, by the then Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson, now Lord Wilson of Dinton, who helpfully decided that I should be given the rights of an official (i.e. government) historian, though I am not one. This privilege has continued under his successors, Lord Turnbull, Lord O’Donnell and Sir Jeremy Heywood. Successive prime ministers – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron – have been warmly interested in the project. I should also like to thank Doug King, and other members of the Royal Household for their courteous cooperation.
The archive material about Lady Thatcher in the United States is astonishingly rich. Her relationship with America really was special, and the documentation is huge. Here the bulk of the grinding daily work is not mine, but that of my Director of US Research, Daniel Collings, the most accurate, intelligent and tenacious scholar I have ever worked with, who has laboured for more than eight years in the presidential libraries and other archives. He has also taken on the lion’s share of the US interviews, talking to, for this volume alone, almost eighty top American policymakers and a healthy slice of the British foreign policy establishment. My thanks to Anthony Seldon for pointing Daniel my way.
For primary source material on the American side, I owe a great debt to the libraries of Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr. Over the years, Daniel and I have filed requests for many thousands of documents, using the Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Review process. Many of these have borne fruit, and the results lie within these pages. Our guides throughout have been the libraries’ hardworking archivists, for whom we have the greatest admiration. We would like to pay particular tribute to the unfailingly helpful and all-knowing Shelly Williams at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Keith Shuler at the Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, Georgia and Robert Holzweiss at the George H. W. Bush Library in College Station, Texas, also deserve extra special thanks.
My research has benefitted from Freedom of Information Act requests filed directly with the FBI, CIA, the Department of Defense and the State Department. Of these the last has been by far the most productive and I thank all the staff there, especially Lorraine Hartmann, who has overseen repeated appeals with patience and true dedication.
I wish to express my gratitude to the staff at numerous libraries and archives across the United States, including the United Nations, the IMF, the English-Speaking Union, the Library of Congress, the US National Archives, the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Widener Library at Harvard University, the Mudd Library at Princeton University and the Lauinger Library at Georgetown University.
In the United States, so many former office holders and officials have been extremely generous with their time. I am deeply grateful to all of them. For this volume in particular I learnt a great deal from Zbigniew Brzezinski (who also kindly shared excerpts
from his private diary), Richard Allen, Bud McFarlane and George Shultz, all of whom witnessed my subject with their respective presidents at close quarters. As ever, Henry Kissinger provided a unique perspective, particularly on Margaret Thatcher’s early experiences in the US. Edward Streator and the late Jim Rentschler also proved deep mines of previously unknown information and gave willingly of their time (and, in the latter’s case, his private documents) on multiple occasions. I remain in their debt. Peter Robinson generously shared insights, papers and even his own manuscript on Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan, all of which were of great value to me. From the academic world I would like to thank Professor Douglas Brinkley at Rice University for his help with President Reagan’s diaries and Professor Giles Scott-Smith at Leiden University, who generously shared his research into Margaret Thatcher’s 1967 visit to the United States.
Other institutions consulted include: the Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Archives Nationales in Paris; Somerville College, Oxford (Pauline Adams); Elizabeth Boardman at Brasenose College, Oxford (vital in tracking down Tony Bray); Kesteven and Grantham Girls School; the Grantham Journal; and the archive of the English Speaking Union. Professor Sir David Butler, with Professor Denis Kavanagh, has built up a unique record of contemporary interviews about British elections, at Nuffield College, Oxford. It has been invaluable for this book, and David Butler has helped me enthusiastically and generously. I am also, as a long-standing member, always in the debt of the London Library.
Several people have shown me private papers – diaries, letters, etc. – and pictures never before seen. I must particularly thank Marion Webb, for letting me study the gripping diary of her father, Airey Neave; Sir John Hoskyns, parts of whose diaries have already been published, but whose unpublished bits, now revealed, are even more telling; Megan Reece, for her father’s unpublished manuscript; Lord Luce for his, about the Falklands; the late Lord Deedes, my former Editor and for so long my counsellor on Thatcher matters, for various glimpses of his archive; Lady Antonia Fraser, for snippets of her diary; Lady Colnbrook, for private sight of her diaries; Lords Renwick and Hannay for manuscript memoirs; Peter Cropper for his private papers; Sir Malcolm Rifkind for notes from the 1970s; Dame Mary Morrison for photographs and other material; the Maclaren family for pictures of Robert Henderson; Tony Bray for pictures of himself; Mrs Shirley Ellis for photographs of the young Margaret and her in Grantham; Sir Adam Ridley, for his admirably full political papers; Lord Vinson of Roddam Dene for materials about the Centre for Policy Studies; Lady Ryder for notes kept on journeys with Mrs Thatcher; and Mrs Ann Gold for letters of her brother, Edward Boyle.
This book is the first of two volumes, and so not all those who have already helped me feature here prominently or, in quite a few cases, at all. Two vital witnesses, for example – President George H. W. Bush and Lord Powell of Bayswater – are almost invisible in volume one, although, in the case of Charles Powell, everything I write has benefitted from his conversation over many years. I hope that anyone who feels he or she should have been mentioned in these acknowledgments will tell me, but will also feel comforted by the fact that volume two offers me the chance to correct errors and omissions.
The following have kindly given interviews for this volume. Many of them have never spoken before: David Aaron; Sir Antony Acland; Kenneth Adelman; Jonathan Aitken; Andrew Alexander; Richard Allen; Martin Anderson; Charles Anson; Lord Armstrong of Ilminster; Dr John Ashworth; Jacques Attali; Sean Aylward; James Baker; Lord Baker of Dorking; John Banks; Ralph Baxter; Lord Bell; the late Lord Belstead; the late Sir Kenneth Berrill; the late Lord Biffen; Dennis Blair; the late Lord Blaker; Michael Blumenthal; Professor Eric Bolton; Sir Clive Bossom; Richard and Veronique Bowdler-Raynar; Sir Rodric Braithwaite; Field Marshall Lord Bramall; Tony Bray; Sheila Browne; the late Lord Brightman, and Lady Brightman; Lord Brittan of Spennithorne; William Brock; Sir Nigel Broomfield; Dr Harold Brown; Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski; Lord Burns; Richard Burt; President George H W Bush; Professor Sir David Butler; Sir Michael Butler; the late Sir Adam Butler; Lord Butler of Brockwell; the late John Carbaugh; Frank Carlucci; Lord Carrington; Sir Bryan Cartledge; Dr John Casey; Anthony Chamier; Sir John Chilcot; John Clare; Judge William Clark; Sir John Coles; Lady Colnbrook; Robert Conquest; Lord Cope of Berkeley; the late Sir Percy Cradock; Mrs Cynthia Crawford; Chester Crocker; Peter Cropper; the late Lord Cuckney of Millbank; Andrew Cullen; Mrs Muriel Cullen; President Valery Giscard d’Estaing; Ken Dam; John Dauth; Jonathan Davidson; Charles De Chassiron; Timothy Deal; Mrs Jean Dean; the late Michael Deaver; the late Lord Deedes; Professor David Dilks; Lord Dobbs; Lord Donoughue of Ashton; Noel Dorr; Sir Edward Du Cann; Kenneth Duberstein; Andrew Duguid; the late Lawrence Eagleburger; Sir Michael Edwardes; Mrs Shirley Ellis; Sir Brian Fall; Lord Fellowes; Edwin Feulner; Roger Fontaine; Roy Fox; the late Milton Friedman; Robert Funseth; Tessa Gaisman; John Gerson; Sir Martin Gilbert; the late Lord Gilmour of Craigmillar; Dermot Gleeson; David Gompert; Sir David Goodall; Sir Philip Goodhart; Oleg Gordievsky; The Earl of Gowrie; Mrs Patricia Greenough; Alan Greenspan; Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach; the late Mrs Mary Grylls; Lord Deben; Richard Haass; Sir Douglas Hague; the late Alexander Haig; Joan Hall; Peter Hannaford; Lord Hannay of Chiswick; Paul Hare; the late Lord Harris of High Cross; Professor Pauline Harrison; Philip Havers QC; John Hedger; Mrs Madeline Hellaby; the late Mrs Josie Henderson; the late Sir Nicholas Henderson; Lord Heseltine; Sir William Heseltine; Charles Hill; James Hooley; Robert Hormats; Sir John Hoskyns; Derek Howe; Lady Howe of Idlicote; Lord Howe of Aberavon; Lord Howell of Guildford; the late Lord Hunt of Tanworth; Robert Hunter; Lord Hurd of Westwell; Sir Robin Ibbs; the late Fred Iklé; Sir Bernard Ingham; Bobby Ray Inman; John Izbicki; Michael James; Peter Jay; Lord Jenkin of Roding; the late Sir Michael Jenkins; Paul Johnson; the late Frank Johnson; Lord Jopling; Lord Kerr of Kinlochard; Michael and Rachel Kinchin-Smith; Lord Kingsdown; Bob Kingston; the late Jeane Kirkpatrick; Dr Henry Kissinger; Sir Timothy Kitson; the late Lord Laing of Dunphail; Tony Lake; Lord Lamont of Lerwick; Sir Tim Lankester; Gib Lanpher; Lord Lawson of Blaby; the late Sir Frederick Lawton; the late Admiral Sir Henry Leach; John Lehman; Paddi Lilley; Josephine Louis; Lord Luce; Brian MacArthur; Sir Murdo Maclean; Sir Christopher Mallaby; the late Lord Marsh of Mannington; Mrs Jane Mayes; Lord Mayhew of Twysden; Lord McAlpine of West Green; Romilly, Lady McAlpine; Robert McFarlane; Edwin Meese; Sir Christopher Meyer; Sir Peter Middleton; Vice-President Walter Mondale; the late Sir Fergus Montgomery; Lord Moore of Lower Marsh; Richard Moose; Gwen Morgan; the late Max Morris; Bob Morris; the late Sir Charles Morrison; the Hon Sara Morrison; Robert Moss; Tony Motley; the late Dermot Nally; David Nicholson; Thomas Niles; Dr Edward Norman; Sir John Nott; Sean O’Callaghan; John O’Sullivan; Sir David Omand; Sir Michael Oppenheimer; Stanley Orman; Mrs Amy Ormond; Lord Owen; the late Henry Owen; Sir Michael Pakenham; the late Sir Michael Palliser; Lord Parkinson of Carnforth; Matthew Parris; the late Miss Jane Parsons; Sir Michael Partridge; Lord Patten; Lord Patten of Barnes; Sir Geoffrey Pattie; Michael Pattison; Gordon Pepper; Judy, Lady Percival; Richard Perle; Colin Peterson; Derek and Tessa Phillips; Richard Pipes; John Poindexter; Amanda Ponsonby; Michael Portillo; Lord Powell of Bayswater; General Colin Powell; Charles Price; the late Clive Priestley; Lord Prior; the late Stephen Probyn; the late Sir Michael Quinlan; the late Sir Timothy Raison; Nancy Reagan; the late Sir Gordon Reece; Thomas Reed; the late Lord Rees; the late Lord Rees-Mogg; Lord Renton of Mount Harry; the late Jim Rentschler; Lord Renwick of Clifton; William Rickett; Sir Adam Ridley; Sir Malcolm Rifkind; Mrs Betty Robbins; Roger Robinson; Peter Robinson; David Rockefeller; General Sir Michael Rose; Donald Rumsfeld; the late Lord Runcie; Lady Ryder of Wensum; Lord Ryder of Wensum; Lord Saatchi; Nick Sanders; Dr James Schlesinger; Sir Michael Scholar; Brent Scowcroft; Raymond Seitz; Sir Nigel Sheinwald; Rob Shepherd; the late Sir Alfred Sherman; George Shultz; the late Lord Simon of Glaisdale; Jeremy Sinclair; Fred Silvester (by correspondence); Walt Slocombe; Miss Lorna Smith (by correspondence)
; Geoffrey Smith; Sir John Sparrow; Mrs Betty Spice; the late Beryl Sprinkel; Sir John Stanley; Sir Kenneth Stowe; Norman Strauss; Edward Streator; Barry Strevens; Nick Stuart; William Taft IV; Sir Teddy Taylor; Lord Tebbit; Carol Thatcher; the late Sir Denis Thatcher; the late Lady Thatcher; Sir Mark Thatcher; Pamela Thomas; Harvey Thomas; Sir Derek Thomas; Lord Thomas of Swynnerton; Major-General Julian Thompson; James Thomson; the late John Tiplady; Ken Tisdell; Gregory Treverton; Lord Turnbull; Hubert Vedrine; Paul Volcker; Sir John Ure; Sir Robert Wade-Gery; Lady Wakeham; Lord Waldegrave of North Hill; Brian Walden; the late Lord Walker of Worcester; Sir Stephen Wall; the late Dr Kenneth Wallace; the late Sir Alan Walters; Sherry Warner; Sir Douglas Wass; the late Lord Weatherill; Marion Webb; Simon Webley; Shirley and Alan Wells; Sir John Weston; Sir Clive Whitmore; the late Mrs Margaret Wickstead; Philip Wilcox; David Willetts; the late Dr Richard Wirthlin; Paul Wolfowitz; Lord Wolfson; June Wood; Mrs Rita Wright; Lord Wright of Richmond; the late Sir Oliver Wright; Lord Young of Graffham; Dov Zakheim.
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