Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage

by Nicholas Wapshott

Overview

New details of the remarkable relationship between two leaders who teamed up to change history.

It's well known that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close allies and kindred political spirits. During their eight overlapping years as U.S. president and UK prime minister, they stood united for free markets, low taxes, and a strong defense against communism. But just how close they really were will surprise you.

Nicholas Wapshott finds that the Reagan-Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Drawing on extensive interviews and hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, he depicts a more complex, intimate, and occasionally combative relationship than has previously been revealed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101217870
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/08/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	420 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nicholas Wapshott is the author of Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage. A former senior editor at the Times of London and the New York Sun, he is now international editor at Newsweek. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction     ix
Above the Shop     1
The World of Work     22
A Taste of Power     46
The Road to the Top     70
Success at the Polls     101
The Honeymooners     126
A Lovers' Tiff     142
Outcast of the Islands     160
Cold Warriors     186
Strikebusters     209
From Russia with Love     226
The Victors     251
The Merry Widow     272
Epilogue     289
Acknowledgments     295
Notes     297
Select Bibliography     315
Index     321

What People are Saying About This

Tina Brown

Nicholas Wapshott, with access to their unpublished correspondence, gives us a nuanced—and immensely readable— portrait of how Reagan and Thatcher resolved their differences in leading the world out of incipient chaos. This is a shrewd and affecting portrait. (Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles)

From the Publisher

"Simon Vance straddles the gap between presenting history and creating a dramatic story.... His approach makes for an interesting listen that doesn't distract from the details." —-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

White House press secretary James Brady once declared "[i]t took a crowbar" to separate President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher. Biographer Wapshott (Thatcher) assesses the nature of that sometimes testy but always close freindship. As Reagan put it, they were "soul mates when it came to reducing government and expanding economic freedom." Not content with biography, Wapshott also provides a political history of the post-WWII period and the 1980s. Elected under similar circumstances, the two faced many of the same trials: assassination attempts, striking workers and tensions with the Soviet Union. Wapshott's attention to Reagan and Thatcher's compatibility sometimes comes at the expense of a deeper analysis of the ideas that united them. On their economic conservatism, Wapshott is insightful and exhaustive; on the ideas driving their foreign policy, he is less thorough, and more detailed comparison of Thatcher's cold Methodism and Reagan's sense of God's purpose after his attempted assassination would have been welcome. Throughout, Wapshott favors the nitty-gritty, painting a portrait of the friendship that shaped the 1980s and the alliance that won the Cold War. (Nov.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Briskly written, perceptive, and, ultimately, moving.

New York Sun

I can recommend a rattling good read with lots of new material on their previously private meetings and correspondence.

National Review

When Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher met for the first time in 1975 in London, writes veteran biographer Wapshott (Peter O'Toole), the moment was nearly as significant as the first meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941. Thatcher was then the newly elected Conservative Party leader, while Reagan, just done with his second and final term as governor of California, had set a course for the White House. This dual biography centers on the personal friendship and political partnership between Thatcher and Reagan, who, as prime minister and president, were of course to alter the politics of Britain and the United States as leaders of the West in the final years of the Cold War. Wapshott wrote an earlier biography of Thatcher, although most of his books have been on actors and entertainers. Here he writes just well enough to intermittently engage a popular readership, his primary audience. He relies mainly on secondary sources, his research is too thin, and his thesis too overreaching for academic readers. Optional for public libraries.
—Bob Nardini

Library Journal

"Simon Vance straddles the gap between presenting history and creating a dramatic story.... His approach makes for an interesting listen that doesn't distract from the details." ---AudioFile

From the Publisher

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher first met in April 1975, before either became a national leader. Both were political loners with strong beliefs, and they developed an affection and devotion to each other through working together. Simon Vance straddles the gap between presenting history and creating a dramatic story with a cultured narrative voice and easily recognizable voices for the two main figures that capture their personalities perfectly. His approach makes for an interesting listen that doesn't distract from the details. Nicholas Wapshott is a fan of Reagan and Thatcher but doesn't hesitate to illustrate their conflicts on the Falklands, Grenada, and nuclear disarmament. Wapshott offers some good lessons on political partnership. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

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