Our media treat leaders as personifying everything that matters, yet social scientists disdain leadership. Most of what we know about leaders comes from biographies. And biography, dominated by those wishing either to demonise, or to celebrate, their subject, is a craft monopolised by insiders, acolytes, and journalists. Regarding Margaret Thatcher, academics have discussed her premiership (1979–1990) in terms of economic change, social history, value transitions, and party decline. They display a disabling ambivalence over whether she was an agent or a manifestation of tectonic shifts. In parallel, there have been multiple biographies, the first published before she was defenestrated by her own party. A great deal, then, has already been written.
Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher by Robin Harris
Random House, $34.95 pb, 500 pp, 9780593072868
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (Volume One: Not For Turning) by Charles Moore
Allen Lane, $49.99 hb, 891 pp, 9780713992823
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