It turns out that writing a short book is so much more difficult than writing a long one. “Would you like to write a biography of Margaret Thatcher for us?” said the nice man from Swift Press. My first instinct was to say no. No one will ever surpass the superb three-volume official biography that Charles Moore spent the best part of a decade writing, so why try? But then again, not everyone would want to read the best part of 3,000 pages.
Two things then happened. Apropos of nothing, my personal trainer (yes, pretentious, I know) Aaron asked me out of the blue one day: “Who’s Margaret Thatcher? I’ve heard the name, but what did she do?” Aaron was 25 at the time. I worked out that no adult under the age of 40 would have experienced her premiership. So I decided to aim the book at that generation, and Aaron’s. Initially, I was asked to write 30,000 words, but that sounded too much like a pamphlet rather than a book, so I persuaded them to allow me 45,000. How on earth, though, do you condense the Falklands War into 2,000 words? Or her trade union reforms, let alone the path to her defenestration?
The second challenge for me was to avoid hagiography, given that I am a well-known keeper of the Thatcher flame. Reading it back, I do think I have written a reasonably balanced account, but others will now be the judge of that. The final chapter might give sceptics a bit of grist, though, as I attempt to bust a dozen myths that have grown up about Thatcher over the years. However, I have to recognise that the haters will always hate. So many continue to lay most of the country’s ills at her door, even though she left office 35 years ago! Utter madness.
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Literary festivals are a glittering star in this country’s cultural firmament. Most of them anyway. It is true that some of the bigger ones are, shall we say, a little factory-like in the way they treat authors, without whom they should realise they wouldn’t have an event. Others have a tendency to only invite authors from the left in order to cater for what they see as their “Guardian-on-sea” audiences. It’s so short-sighted, but reflective of the echo chamber society we currently inhabit. The smaller festivals are more open to entertaining authors who may not have voted Labour, and are all the better for it.
From an author’s perspective, it’s far more rewarding to go to Fowey, Appledore or Hexham and be treated like royalty than go to Hay, Oxford or… I’d better stop there. I appeared at Oxford a couple of years ago and they forgot to order any of my books. You had one job.
A company called Fane has signed up many big-name authors to do theatre tours up and down the country, with the understanding that they must not appear at the big literary festivals. They’re paid proper money, rather than the pittances paid at even the biggest of literary festivals.
There is a huge appetite among the general public to see politicians up close. My Iain Dale All Talk Edinburgh fringe shows demonstrate the appetite for this. Politicians are always the highest sellers. In recent years Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Rory Stewart have sold the most tickets of each run. Apart from Miriam Margolyes, obvs.
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Friedrich Merz, the new chancellor of Germany, is a man in a hurry. To most observers in the United Kingdom, he has risen without trace. But then again, that’s not unusual. Why is it that our country’s media is so obsessed by the United States and more or less ignores what’s going on in Germany and most other European countries? It can’t be the language issue because we also ignore the hugely entertaining political shenanigans occurring in the Republic of Ireland, unless something ridiculous happens, like a convicted gangster nearly being elected to the Dáil Éireann.
Angela Merkel thought she had vanquished Merz back in 2005, when he eventually forsook the world of politics to earn many millions of euros in business. He then returned, losing the 2018 and 2021 CDU leadership elections to the hapless Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and then the equally disastrous Armin Laschet. It was fourth time lucky in 2022 when he pitched himself as the only man who could rescue the party.
One of his main tasks is to see off the increasingly popular and populist AfD, which is now the dominant party in the east. At each election its support increases, yet Merz’s policies appear designed purely to appease potential AfD supporters. People ask why they would vote for a pale imitation of the real thing. So much of Merz’s policy platform harks back to a glorious economic past in order to try to bring it back. It’s not going to happen. To make Germany great again, it will require a more modern approach. At the age of 69, Merz talks the talk, but is so far showing no signs of being the moderniser Germany so desperately needs.
Iain Dale co-hosts the “Where Politics Meets History” podcast. His latest book, “Margaret Thatcher: A Short Biography” (Swift Press), is out on 5th June
