The Queen and Mrs Thatcher: An Inconvenient Relationship

by Dean Palmer

This is the remarkable story of how the two most powerful women in Britain at the time met and disliked each other on sight. For over a decade they quietly waged a war against each other on both a personal and political stage, disagreeing on key issues including sanctions against South Africa, the Miners’ Strike and allowing US planes to bomb Libya using UK military bases. Elizabeth found the means to snub and undermine her prime minister through petty class put-downs and a series of press leaks. Margaret attacked her monarch by sidelining her internationally, upstaging her at home and allowing the Murdoch press to crucify the royal family. This book is a window into the 1980s, an era when Britain was changed beyond recognition by a woman who made ‘Thatcherism’ the defining word of the decade.

• ISBN10: 0750962658
• ISBN13: 9780750962650
• Publish Date: 1 June 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: The History Press Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I won an ARC of this book via the GoodReads First Reads programme. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2015/08/31/review-the-queen-and-mrs-thatcher/

I couldn’t put this book down once I started reading it. Setting up the premise of these two women coming from opposite ends of the class spectrum but in positions of power was fascinating and it was interesting to read how their relationship devolved after that fateful first meeting. It’s astonishing to think that, being one of the few women in power and sharing some similar struggles and opinions, they would quite dislike each other and do little to advance the role of women in the public sphere (but as their biographies note, their upbringing and experiences lent little for them to promote the role of women during the 80s). It was also fascinating to read to what extent they actually waged their little war against each other, from old-fashioned snobbery to actively sidelining them publically to enlisting the media for support. It was very strange, really, but the contrasts were also interesting to examine.

The set-up of the book was devised in a way that allowed the author’s argument points to flow through logically but still in keeping with major events that happened chronologically over the course of the 1980s. There’s a bit of back-and-forth at times, especially when it came to these women’s private lives, and there was a bit of repetition that was quite noticeable but otherwise it was a very interesting argument to follow. A word on the publication: short as this book was, I wished they had increased the size of the font a wee bit. It’s a little smaller than standard, and while I can read with small font, it does make the text seem overwhelming at times.

The Queen and Mrs. Thatcher overall was an interesting look at the queen and prime minister’s frosty relationship (to put it mildly) over the course of the 1980s and how it played out in the political scene. I learned a lot along the way, perhaps because events were conveyed in a precise manner, about the rise of the media and the unspoken rules when it comes to interacting with the monarchy. Readers of non-fiction who are interested in the British monarchy, British politics, and the current events of the 1980s will want to check out this book.