The ultimate insider, Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher's press secretary during her tenure at No.10. These eagerly anticipated diaries will shed light on the final, dramatic two years of her time as Prime Minister and detail the coming crises which saw her resign in November 1990. Her final days saw some of the most remarkable events in British political history, and Ingham was, for once, helpless to steer events. These diaries will come to be viewed as arguably amongst the most important primary source material about her unexpected fall from power.
Regardless of your political views, this book offers a great insight into the workings of government, the back biting nature of the game and a sense of the pressures at hand. The best moments are candid insights, but these are too often hidden behind a party line, which is why I’m not rating this book higher. It could, and perhaps should, have been more explosive. It’s a slight damp squib in that regard.
It was one of my first political memories, and the ending of Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister stood large in my mind. It was historic; it was paradigm-shifting. Yet, the contemporaneous accounts in Sir Bernard’s diary allow me to view these events through anther lens, one of a personal perspective. The story remains gripping, but with a human face.
Most of it I found boring but the parts towards the end, the actual downfall of Lady T were riveting. Another real eyewitness along with Alan Clark in his diaries.