By Richard Vinen
Simon & Schuster
£20

Love her or loathe her, she’s nothing if not memorable. In this brisk examination of Margaret Thatcher’s politics and legacy Richard Vinen notes that, in a study of dementia sufferers, she was the only prime minister to have remained lodged in the memories of all those involved. Vinen asks why this is, and whether her policies were really as revolutionary as her most devoted followers – and the woman herself – have claimed over the years..

Vinen’s central mission is to debunk the notion that the woman who so loved the ‘Iron Lady’ sobriquet was always a dyed in the wool ideologue. As late as her stint as leader of the opposition, she was unconvinced of the merits of monetarism – the doctrine of attacking inflation by restraining money supply, even at the cost of high unemployment – though the policy would later became synonymous with her premiership. What’s more, when she made controversial comments, such as her notorious suggestion in 1978 that some Britons felt “swamped” by immigration, she did so to convey a vague sense of toughness without specifying actual policies.

None of this serves to minimise Thatcher’s impact or the strength of her opinions; rather, it places both specifically in the context of Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Though the PM’s acolytes later codified Thatcherism into a set of broad beliefs and policies, in its early days the idea – like the woman herself – was best defined by what it was opposed to. And as Vinen reminds us, never was the woman herself more at home than when gifted an enemy to denounce; once handbagged, enemies such as General Galtieri and Arthur Scargill tended to stay down. Not that we needed much reminding; few of us seem to able to forget.