Harris's conclusion is devastating: "This was not a Greek tragedy. Hubris was not punished; Mrs Thatcher was insensitive but she was not hubristic . . . Yet, making all due allowances, Margaret Thatcher was shabbily treated by people who owed her a debt of personal loyalty. She might not have beaten Heseltine. She might not have won the next general election. But she had a good chance of doing both, and she deserved the right to try. The cabinet denied it to her because most of its members preferred interest to honour." What made this particular stain so indelible was that the memory of war was then still fresh — indeed, another war (in the Gulf) was impending — and while culprits were men, the victim was a woman. Not all of the Conservatives' troubles since 1990 can be blamed on Mrs Thatcher's defenestration, but the nation's deep-seated loss of trust in the party dates from that dishonourable deed.
Moore ends his first volume with Mrs Thatcher's restoration of national honour in the Falklands War. It was her most dangerous crisis but it was also the turning point — the moment when it dawned on many of us that life and death were at stake in the battle she had begun. The myth that she was "glorying in slaughter" was based on her injunction to "rejoice" — but when she said it, no lives had been lost. President Reagan defied his own State Department when, in a speech to both Houses of Parliament at the height of hostilities in the South Atlantic, he linked the cause for which the British were fighting to the Cold War: "the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed, that the people must participate in the decisions of government — the decisions of government under the rule of law." When Reagan met her, soon after the Argentine surrender, Mrs Thatcher pre-empted any talk of compromise: "He wants me to be magnanimous in victory, and I'm not going to be."
She was then 56 but looked much younger ("like Queen Elizabeth I" as an aide recalled) and she would never again feel quite so much in her element. At a victory dinner for the main players in the crisis, she was the only woman present. After the toasts and speeches, Moore concludes, "the Prime Minister rose in her seat again and said, ‘Gentlemen, shall we join the ladies?' It may well have been the happiest moment of her life."
Anyone who cares about Mrs Thatcher will buy both these books. Harris has given us a vivid and concise study in adversity, triumph and treachery. If Moore's second volume lives up to the promise of his first, his biography will be the fullest, most objective and best, not only of Mrs Thatcher, but of any modern politician.
