Making Thatcher's Britain ; Making Thatcher's Britain: Reviewed by Timothy WHITTON

Abstract

International audience ; Given that Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders have both written extensively on the history of British politics and political thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Thatcherism was bound to crop up on their research agenda. As official papers are continually released according to the thirty year rule, so historians are able to broaden their focus on the eleven years during which Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and their book, Making Thatcher's Britain, has enabled them to bring together thirteen case studies written by a variety of researchers – including themselves -, professors, lecturers and PhD students, which in itself shows that "Thatcherism" continues to interest a wide spectrum of scholars. Jackson and Saunders fully acknowledge the fact that a very impressive body of literature has already been devoted to Margaret Thatcher but their claim to novelty lies in the fact that they have adopted a historian's standpoint in order to connect the varieties of Thatcherism not only to an ideology and political creed but to the overall history of twentieth century Britain.