Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street

by Peter Just

The story of Margaret Thatcher’s life after Downing Street is a tale of high drama and low farce, with, at its heart, one extraordinary woman. No longer in office but never really out of power, Margaret Thatcher enjoyed perhaps the most consequential ex-premiership of any Prime Minister in British history. British politics today largely reflects and is a consequence not only of Thatcher’s time in No. 10 but also of her later life and how people reacted and still react to it. It is as much our story as it is hers.

In her centenary year, this book provides a radical reassessment of how Thatcher’s post-prime ministership has been viewed to date. Covering the four main areas of her work after Downing Street – philosophy, party, policy and performance – and analysing her continued and continuing influence on the Conservative leaders and Prime Ministers of all parties who followed her, it demonstrates why, however small the politics may or may not have got since 1990, Margaret Thatcher is still big.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2025

About the author

Peter Just has done extensive research among the Dou Donggo of Sumbawa Island in Indonesia. His research interests include dispute settlement and law, kinship and social organization, and religion ritual. He is the author of Dou Donggo Justice: Conflict and Morality in an Indonesian Society, and is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Williams College.