God and Mrs Thatcher Read Online Free Page B

defined your experience, and, most probably, still determines your opinion of the Thatcher years. I was born on the night of the Brixton riots in April 1981 in nearby Tooting where copycat disturbances prompted my father to start boarding up the front windows of the house, during which his frantic nail-banging triggered my mother’s waters to break. I can safely say that I am a child of Thatcher, yet I have no personal tales of struggle or success associated with that tumultuous decade. I am neither the daughter of a miner nor a Sloane Ranger. I do not remember ever reading Jenny Lives with Peter and Eric but I do recall ‘AIDS’ being the ultimate curse in the playground. We lived in a house rather than a flat, which my father owned, but we were not benefactors of Thatcher’s ‘sale of the century’, rather of a risky bet my grandfather had won on the eve of war. Margaret Thatcher was very much in the background rather than in the foreground in my youth; an absence which I have more than made up for in my adult life.
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    I HAVE ACCRUED many debts in the writing of this book: financial, intellectual and personal. The Department of History at King’s College London proved a stimulating and rewarding environment in which to be based and thanks must go to the departmental staff, especially Richard Vinen and Pat Thane as well as my PhD supervisor Matthew Thomson at Warwick for all their support and encouragement.Special thanks also go to all the undergraduates who took the ‘Britain’s Thatcher’ course between 2010 and 2014. My students forced me to think and rethink my ideas about the 1980s and reaffirmed my belief that teaching is a privilege, which often benefits the teacher more than the student.
    If a historian is wholly dependent on their archives, then this book is entirely indebted to the countless number of librarians and archivists who managed to unearth obscure and often uncatalogued material from their respective basements. My thanks go to all the staff at the British Library and those at John Ryland’s Library, Grantham Library, Winchester Records Office, Lincolnshire Records Office, Lambeth Palace and Manchester Central Library. There are a few archivists to whom I am especially grateful: Paul Webster at Liverpool City Archives, Meg Whittle at Liverpool Catholic Cathedral Archives, Chris Collins for granting me permission to use the Margaret Thatcher papers and for creating the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website, which is unparalleled in its breadth, accessibility and comprehension. Finally, the irrepressible Andrew Riley, keeper of the Thatcher papers at Churchill College, Cambridge, for all his help and guidance in both my teaching and research. I am also extremely grateful to those who gave me permission to use such material, including the Archbishop’s Council, Rt Rev. Nigel McCulloch, Enoch Powell’s Literary Estate, Derek Worlock’s Literary Executors for special permission to view and print his papers and the late Lady Grace Sheppard, who not only granted me full access to the David Sheppard archive but also proved a most stimulating and informative interviewee; it is privilege to be able to call their daughter, Jenny Sinclair, a friend. In conducting interviews with both Anglicans and Conservatives it really did seem as if I was encountering two different ‘Englands’ and yet both were characterised by their warm hospitality and enthusiasm for the project. I am incredibly grateful to the following for their time and contributions: Jonathan Aitken, Rt Hon. Lord Baker, Rt Rev. Michael Baughen,Rt Hon. Lord Powell of Bayswater, Rt Rev. Ronnie Bowlby, Rt Rev. Tom Butler, Rt Hon. Lord Carey, Cynthia Crawford, Rt Hon. Frank Field, Rt Lord Gummer, Rt Hon. Lord Harries, Derek Hatton, Rt Hon. Lord Howe, Rt Hon. Lord Hurd, Sir Bernard Ingham, Rt Hon. Lord Jenkin, Rt Hon. Lord Lawson, Clifford Longley, Rt Rev. David Jenkins, Anthony Kilmister OBE, Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Prof. David