Table Of ContentTable of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
A NOTE ON STYLE AND SOURCES
Preface
PREFACE TO THE PREVIOUS EDITION
Chapter 1 - The Shrine of Mother Margaret
Chapter 2 - La Pasionaria of Middle-Class Privilege
Chapter 3 - “I Hate Communists”
Chapter 4 - Diva, Matron, Housewife, Shrew
Chapter 5 - The Sledgehammer
Chapter 6 - For Strategic Sheep Purposes
INVASION! - The Sun, reporting the British recapture of
South Georgia
A PUNCH UP YOUR JUNTA! - Sunday People, reporting
raids on Port Stanley
GOTCHA! - The Sun, reporting the sinking of the Belgrano
STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA! - The Sun, urging rejection of
the Peruvian peace proposal
KILL AN ARGIE AND WIN A METRO - —Private Eye
HERE IT COMES, SENORS! - —The Sun, caption to a photo
of a missile signed Up ...
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - —Newsweek
Chapter 7 - Coal and Iron
Chapter 8 - Miners Is Miners
Chapter 9 - The Triumvirate
Chapter 10 - No! No! No!
CONCLUSION
EPILOGUE
PHOTOGRAPH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments
A GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
INDEX
Copyright Page
PRAISE FOR
Claire Berlinski’s There Is No Alternative
“Often entertaining and sometimes illuminating . . .
idiosyncratic and interesting . . . Berlinski’s judgments are
thoughtful, particularly her central insight that what underlay
Lady Thatcher’s hatred of socialism was not only that she found
it economically inefficient, or that communist regimes had
drenched the world in blood, but that she believed it was
morally corrupting.”
—Financial Times
“Fresh, original and extremely well-written.”
—Washington Times
“Claire Berlinski has written a much better book about her
than one of those door-stop biographies that are now the
destiny of almost every public figure. . . . The book is all the
better for being a work of synthesis as well as analysis. Without
being hagiography, it is about as powerful a defence of
Thatcher’s record as is likely ever to be written.”
—Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“Berlinski has crawled through the archives and interviewed
many of the principals of the Thatcher era. . . . She asks the
pertinent and the impertinent questions and challenges the
assumptions of the players and their own conclusions about
what happened and why.”
—World Affairs
“Entertaining. . . . Berlinski often expresses herself with verve.
. . . Berlinski’s account of the case for free markets is—as a
primer for the non-economist—lucid and lively. . . . She’s
colorful—thanks in part to some enjoyable inside track from
Charles Powell—about Thatcher’s relationships with Gorbachev
and Reagan.”
—American Conservative
“Berlinski, who has written insightfully about the threat of
Islamic fundamentalism . . . shows now how capable
statesmanship can redirect history’s seemingly irreversible
tide.”
—Claremont Review
“[An] excellent look back at Margaret Thatcher’s significance.”
—Human Events
“Berlinski shows commitment and energy as an author . . . Her
encounters with Neil Kinnock are tactical masterpieces, where
she draws the Welsh windbag out and then deflates his woolly
thinking with as much cool, perhaps cruel, precision as
Thatcher herself did.”
—The Scotsman
“Berlinski argues for the enduring importance of Thatcher by
casting her as the great scourge of socialism at a time when
financial crises have led many governments to take a larger
role in controlling their economies. Everywhere we turn these
days, the state is advancing and private initiative is
discouraged and denigrated. But that’s only for now. Thatcher
proved socialism’s gains aren’t irreversible by trampling them
underfoot.”
—Regulation: The Cato Review of Business and Government
“Claire Berlinski’s There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret
Thatcher Matters is a delightful biography of a prime minister
who charmed visiting leaders with her feet curled up under
her. Berlinski’s writing is also charmingly unconventional:
Instead of ruthlessly cutting to stay on topic, she shows
personalities by displaying dinner table repartee and dining
choices.”
—World Magazine
“For delightful reading, few biographers or historians can
match this book. Why Margaret Thatcher Matters is equal
parts of each genre. . . . Claire Berlinski’s prose sparkles with
wit, insight, and charm. There is little doubt that those
attributes helped to lubricate the many interviews she
conducted with Thatcher’s friends and enemies, and with those
affected by her policies. Berlinski is clearly enthralled by her
subject, but she is not blind to Thatcher’s failings.”
—American Thinker
“Where Berlinski stands out—the real added value of her
account of Thatcherism compared to others—is her elaboration
of how, above and beyond all else, it was a moral crusade.”
—British Politics Group Quarterly
“Claire Berlinski has written one of the finest biographies of
2008 . . . Superbly written . . . There Is No Alternative should
be read by anyone wanting to understand geo-economics and
party politics . . . A masterpiece.”
—Scoffery.com
“The lesson of Berlinski’s timely book is that capable
statesmanship can redirect history’s seemingly irreversible
tide.”
—PowerLine blog
“Claire Berlinski’s insight into Margaret Thatcher’s character
makes this book fascinating, and her intellectual seriousness
and rigor make it compelling. It is a perfect marriage of author
and subject: Berlinski’s Thatcher is painfully real and human,
yet simultaneously larger-than-life.”
—General Brent Scowcroft,
author of America and the World
“Finally the Iron Lady gets her due. Claire Berlinski brilliantly
lays out how Margaret Thatcher’s strength and conviction
changed the world. Without a Prime Minister Thatcher there
might not have been a President Ronald Reagan. And Berlinski
reminds us how the whole world would benefit from a new
Thatcher today.”
—Peter Schweizer, author of Reagan’s War
