The Downing Street Years

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I had thought I might find 'The Downing Street Years' unwatchable: four hours of self-justification by Brtian's controversial (and recently deceased) former Prime Minister. In fact, the programme is studiously neutral in its political conclusions, but ruthlessly incisive in its personal ones; and the person who wields the knife is in fact Thatcher herself, though she is its main victim. For most of the other interviewees, like most former politicians in such documentaries, come across as rueful, thoughtful, reflective. Maybe this cuddliness is just an act; but it does make you wonder what the political process does to have made them seem quite so inhuman when in the heat of government. But Thatcher is the exception, and when asked to comment on the events of the recent past (the programme was made in 1993), she does so without showing the slightest hint of humanity. It's not just her regal tone; but the fact that her opponents are so uniformly condemned as wrong, deceitful, cowardly and (in most cases) actively trying to make Britain a worse place. There's not a hint of nuance in her world-view; no willingness to concede that she might not have always been right, or even that others might have been wrong but nonetheless acting in good faith. It's almost like watching old film of Adolf Hitler: it makes you wonder, how did this person ever get to become leader of a country? What did people see in her? Perhaps people really did think that the problems of her time required an unusual personality to deal with them. Because, while the programme can not and does not offer a definitive answer, say, on the correctness of her monetary policy or her actions in the Falklands conflict, it fairly unambiguously paints the great leader as someone with a sense of self-righteousness verging on the lunatic.

The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret : Free Download The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret : Free Download

Only the most partisan and deluded of her critics will deny that the country Mrs. Thatcher inherited in 1979 was in shambles. Her election victory came on the heels of Britain’s “Winter of Discontent”—a period between 1978-79 when strikes by public sector trade unions brought the country to its knees. But the struggles had begun much earlier. The British economy was chronically ill throughout the 1970s—so bad by 1974 that Foreign Secretary James Callaghan warned of an impending “breakdown of democracy.” Inflation reached a crippling 26.9% in late 1975, leading Harold Wilson’s Labour government to adopt an incomes policy that capped pay increases for public sector workers at government-mandated limits. Sanctions were levied to persuade private companies to follow suit. But while inflation had halved by 1978, Mr. Callaghan (now the PM) and his minority Labour government kept wage increases capped below 5%. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which had played nice with their Labour allies for three years, finally revolted. When Mr. Callaghan announced that the general election anticipated for September would be postponed until the next year, he set off the largest disruption of British labor since 1926. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-12-10 02:49:22 Boxid IA40001320 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierurn:lcp:downingstreetyea00that:epub:c07def68-f06f-4ffa-92bd-6b7da3f59877 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier downingstreetyea00that Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2f776j7g Isbn 0060170565 The Downing Street Years is a memoir by Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, covering her premiership of 1979 to 1990. It was accompanied by a four-part BBC television series of the same name.

The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret - Archive.org The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret - Archive.org

Walpole took up residence on 22nd September 1735. The Walpoles used their new residence as a place to entertain important guests, including royalty, politicians, writers and soldiers. However by the turn of the 19th century, although Number 10 continued to serve as the Prime Minister’s office, it was no longer used as a home, as most prime ministers preferred to live in their own, more comfortable townhouses. This book looks at the decade plus that she was in power. It's an interesting book, because she talks about the things that drew me to student politics in the late 1980s. But anyone who reads it now will find it reads more like a historical treaties than it does anything else. I say this because much of what she writes about have become settled facts that everyone agrees on. Larry, the Downing Street cat, gets in the royal wedding spirit in a Union flag bow-tie before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.urn:lcp:downingstreetyea0000that_o3q4:epub:29a1f430-6294-414d-bf6d-f1a2a8c38777 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier downingstreetyea0000that_o3q4 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4tj86v50 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0002550490 I listened to this on tape and I also plan on reading the hard cover. I got the audio version from the library but bought both parts of her biographies. Some of the most famous British political leaders have lived and worked in Number 10, including Robert Walpole, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had eighteen months to write the book covering her premiership. She hired a previous director of the Conservative Research Department, Robin Harris, to do most of the writing, the Oxford academic Christopher Collins to do the research and O'Sullivan to help polish the drafts. Just like with her speeches, Thatcher would "edit, criticise and exhaustively rewrite the drafts" until she was happy. [10] Some sources believe that Thatcher wrote at least part of the book at the Manor House Hotel, in Castle Combe, in the Full Glass bar. [12] [13] Reception [ edit ]

Surprising History of 10 Downing Street The Surprising History of 10 Downing Street

Of particular amusement to me as an educator was the way she scoffs alarmingly at "extreme" movements in education which are now accepted as basic tenets of the institution. All I can say is "I can't believe I took so long to read this!" I have owned this book for 20 years, and for 20 years it has sat on my shelf collecting dust. I have always been a fan of Margaret Thatcher, but somehow felt I was not well versed enough in British politics to appreciate Lady Thatcher's memoirs of her time as Prime Minister. Throughout the history of these houses, ministers have lived by agreement in whatever rooms they thought necessary. On some occasions Number 11 has been occupied not by the Chancellor of the Exchequer but by the individual considered to be the nominal deputy Prime Minister (whether or not they actually took the title); this was particularly common in coalition governments. Sometimes a minister only uses the Downing Street flat for formal occasions and lives elsewhere. This first volume of her memoirs is a riveting first-hand portrait of the events and personalities of her eleven years in power. She recalls the triumphs and the critical moments of her premiership – the Falklands War, the miners' strike, the Brighton bomb, the Westland Affair and her unprecedented three election victories. Her judgements of the men and women she encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are astonishingly frank. She is lavish with her praise; devastating with her criticism. The book reaches a gripping climax with an hour-by-hour description from inside 10 Downing Street of her dramatic final days in office.Margaret Thatcher was the towering figure of late-twentieth-century British politics. This is the story of her remarkable life in her own words. Man arrested after car crashes into Downing Street gates". BBC News. 25 May 2023 . Retrieved 25 May 2023.

The Downing Street Years - Wikipedia

Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth The appearance of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs has been one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events in many years. As this book now shows, rarely has such a sense of anticipation been so amply justified." "The Downing Street Years is, first and foremost, a brilliant first-hand portrayal of the events and personalities of her years in power. She gives riveting accounts of the great and critical moments of her premiership - the three election victories, the Falklands War, the Miners' Strike, the Brighton Bomb, the Westland Affair, her battles abroad with foreign federalists and at home with faint-hearted or misguided ministers. Her judgements of the men and women she has encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are completely, sometimes brutally, frank. She is lavish with praise where it is due; devastating in her criticism when it is not. The book ends with an account of her last days which is as gripping as anything in thriller fiction." "But The Downing Street Years is as much an argument as it is a record or a series of character portraits. No prime minister of modern times has sought to change Britain and its place in the world as radically as she did. Her government, she says, was about the application of a philosophy, not the implementation of an administrative programme. She sets out here with forcefulness and conviction the reasons for her beliefs and how she sought to turn them into action." There used to be a public house, the Rose and Crown, in Downing Street. In 1830 the tenant was a Mr Dixon. [13] She manages to effect the transition to this complete disillusionment, first, by being well short of rapture in her early tributes - 'Geoffrey Howe was superbly stolid in resisting the pressure' (1979) must surely rank as one of the great limited compliments of history - and, second, by attributing his decline in loyalty to her not to anything she might have done to him but to an infection contracted through long association with Foreign Office officials and degenerate Europeans.The substance of her judgments, however, is very much her own, and quite often shrewd, particularly about people with whom she did not have close relations, although it is a specialised taste to put Haughey above Fitzgerald and Mulroney above Trudeau amongst Prime Ministers. I am very much a product of the 1980s. The first political act I remember was Wilson's resignation as Prime Minister in 1976 and Jim Callaghan's rise to power in his wake. Consequently Callaghan's subsequent loss to Thatcher is the first election I remember.