“... detailed Bellow-surrogate). Home is Chicago. The year is uncertain: there are mentions of Carter, Margaret Thatcher, but also of Entebbe, Cambodia. The Dean has come to Bucharest with his Rumanian wife Minna, a distinguished astronomer. Minna’s mother Valeria is dying. ‘Corde had come to give support.’ He is consciously testing his reserves as a ...”

“... of power. It may have been spared a report from the Peacock Committee which fully satisfied Mrs Thatcher’s desire to subject the Corporation to advertising, but the report appears to have been succeeded by plans for the commercialising of Radios 1 and 2. With the death of the Chairman of its Board of Governors, Stuart Young, we have been braced for ...”

“... land of UK independence. In 1975 the future standard-bearer of Bruges speech Euroscepticism, Margaret Thatcher, had been the photogenic new leader of a largely Europhile Conservative Party, and the proud owner of a hideous woolly jumper displaying the flags of the EEC nations. Back in the mid-1970s the tycoon James Goldsmith, the future founder of ...”

“... figures. (Imagine being puzzled that there were very different assessments of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher or the presidency of Ronald Reagan.) They have also been more confident than most that some kind of accurate calibration of monstrosity v. political virtue is attainable. Hence there has been a long series of worthy studies reaching the ...”

“... sustain a strategy in peacetime. Like it or not – it is not one of Jenkins’s own analogies – Margaret Thatcher, in seizing her moment in the Eighties, temporarily came nearest to matching Gladstone’s more persistent impact on the politics of his day, in effectively mobilising popular support behind a recasting of the common sense of ...”

“... sides of the Atlantic, he was one of the scholars convened at Chequers in March 1990 to instruct Margaret Thatcher on the German question. Perhaps prolonged exposure to important men of affairs, living and dead, explains why Stern sometimes sounds more like C.P Snow than Lionel Trilling. This is a book in which issues are burning, strides are ...”

“... irritated as Arthur Andersen’s lawyers got hold of Cabinet minutes and even a statement from Margaret Thatcher. Relations between the firm and the Government became ever more strained in spite of the fact that a former Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, was on Arthur Andersen and Co’s payroll. The legal action and the strain led to a decree ...”

“... The most important aspect of European integration for Britain has been the single market. It was Margaret Thatcher who signed up for this and the European market has increasingly become the kind of marketplace the Tories and New Labour feel comfortable in. When 15 member states have to vote on legislation, it is difficult to find a majority in favour of ...”

“... for the old and the infirm, that is called into question. By the time of Sheep’s Clothing, with Margaret Thatcher in power, not much has changed except that scamming is harder work in a world less easily beguiled (‘There’s nothing I need that I can’t get for myself,’ one intended dupe retorts). The title refers to the pretence of ‘cradle to ...”

“... may beg to differ. The early recordings are painfully stagey. The first, from 1951, features Margaret Lockwood (best known for playing feisty period heroines opposite James Mason, who himself did Desert Island Discs in 1961 and 1981) sounding as if she’s narrating a public information film: the Eton boating song ‘conjures up for me a very pleasant ...”

“... cut-the-welfare-bills ‘Labour’ Government whose leader is said to be a serious admirer of Margaret Thatcher? (‘Third Way’? It’s just the sensible, well-tried electoral trick of stealing your opponent’s clothes.) Stephen has recently seen John Redwood, who has so far recovered from post-electoral stress disorder as to be predicting that ...”

“... Denis Thatcher is entirely inventable – as John Wells understood: he comes in a flat pack with easy-to-follow instructions, all the components familiar general shapes, all parts from stock, no odd angles, no imagination required. When they came up with the idea for Ikea, they used Denis Thatcher as the prototype ...”

“... There are​ people who like the idea of living in a hotel, but nobody wants to die in one. Margaret Thatcher checked in to the Ritz in December 2012, a couple of weeks after she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. ‘She loved the Ritz,’ her private secretary recalled. ‘She was looked after by beautifully dressed young men: the world wasn’t bothering her anymore ...”

“... leaders in this period emerge as who they were rather than as what they did. The main exception is Margaret Thatcher, who gets a page about her character and background – much more than De Gaulle, Willy Brandt or Khrushchev. This is curious for several reasons. First of all, because Judt does not like Thatcher, giving ...”

“... couple of years ago. His favourite food as a teenager (McDonald’s), his role models (Bill Gates, Margaret Thatcher), his jargon (Key Performance Indicators), the entertainers he picked for private parties (Pitbull and PSY), his choice of intimidation techniques (an envelope with a bullet in it), the video games he liked (Age of Empires and Call of ...”