The Downing Street Years

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I started reading this book after the Tories were finally booted from power in 1997. I read it to consign the memory of her and her party to history and to remind myself how bad things were. [Sadly the labour Government now appear to be little more than replicants of the Tories... and equally as corrupt.] Of particular amusement to me as an educator was the way she scoffs alarmingly at "extreme" movements in education which are now accepted as basic tenets of the institution.

The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret - Archive.org The Downing Street years : Thatcher, Margaret - Archive.org

When the movement for Irish independence became increasingly violent, it was decided to retain the barriers, which were raised and strengthened. On 26 November 1920 construction commenced on a wooden barricade, 8 feet (2.4m) high at the end of the street. They were described as being of a "substantial character" mounted on proper foundations and incorporated vehicle gates. [16] [17] The barriers were taken down in 1922 when the Irish Free State was created. Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9837 Ocr_module_version 0.0.7 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19882 Openlibrary_edition After the death of Sir Knyvet and his wife, the building passed to their niece, Elizabeth Hampden and the house became known as Hampden House.This is all that I would want from such a book. Obviously it is written from a Conservative perspective, which clearly offends some of the other reviewers, (what did they expect?). In 1682 the renowned architect Sir Christopher Wren was employed to redesign the houses. Between 1682 and 1684, a cul-de-sac of 15 to 20 terraced houses was built, now called Downing Street. Downing Street were the houses between Number 9 and Whitehall that were taken over by the government and demolished in 1824 to allow the construction of the Privy Council Office, Board of Trade and Treasury offices. On the afternoon of 25 May 2023 the gates were damaged when a car crashed into them. The Prime Minister was inside at the time. A man was arrested by police and the incident was not terrorism related. [21] [22] Public right of way [ edit ] Downing Street in the late 1980s, before the gates were installed

The Downing Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters. Volume IV: The Downing

Downing Street in London has one of the most photographed front doors in Britain. Since 1735, it has been the official residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Prime Ministers and world leaders have been photographed outside this famous door and important announcements have been made to the nation from here. The substance of her judgments, however, is very much her own, and quite often shrewd, particularly about people with whom she did not have close relations, although it is a specialised taste to put Haughey above Fitzgerald and Mulroney above Trudeau amongst Prime Ministers. The Downing Street Years is a memoir by Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, covering her premiership of 1979 to 1990. It was accompanied by a four-part BBC television series of the same name.Many of Walpole’s successors, however, were not impressed with what William Pitt the Younger called a “vast, awkward house” and chose to continue to reside in their own personal homes. By the early 1800s, the neighborhood around Downing Street also grew seedy with brothels and gin joints. Calling 10 Downing Street “dingy and decaying,” Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli paid for the renovation of the home’s personal quarters in 1874 while the government financed the improvement of other parts of the residence. Since 1902, every British prime minister has called Downing Street home. The houses between Number 10 and Whitehall were acquired by the government and demolished in 1824 to allow the construction of the Privy Council Office, Board of Trade and Treasury offices. In 1861, the houses on the south side of Downing Street were replaced by purpose-built government offices for the Foreign Office, India Office, Colonial Office, and the Home Office. These welcome interruptions occur mostly when she is delivering a personal judgment upon some colleague or international statesman. But even here there is a frequent feeling that the pieces are not in her idiom. A good example is the sentence: 'In following Peter Carrington with Francis Pym as Foreign Secretary I had exchanged an amusing Whig for a gloomy one.' It is a nice aphorism, but my immediate reaction was to wonder which of the collaborators wrote it. Whigs, amusing or gloomy, are not part of the natural small change of her vocabulary. The appearance of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs has been one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events in many years. As this book now shows, rarely has such a sense of anticipation been so amply justified." "The Downing Street Years is, first and foremost, a brilliant first-hand portrayal of the events and personalities of her years in power. She gives riveting accounts of the great and critical moments of her premiership - the three election victories, the Falklands War, the Miners' Strike, the Brighton Bomb, the Westland Affair, her battles abroad with foreign federalists and at home with faint-hearted or misguided ministers. Her judgements of the men and women she has encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are completely, sometimes brutally, frank. She is lavish with praise where it is due; devastating in her criticism when it is not. The book ends with an account of her last days which is as gripping as anything in thriller fiction." "But The Downing Street Years is as much an argument as it is a record or a series of character portraits. No prime minister of modern times has sought to change Britain and its place in the world as radically as she did. Her government, she says, was about the application of a philosophy, not the implementation of an administrative programme. She sets out here with forcefulness and conviction the reasons for her beliefs and how she sought to turn them into action."

Thatcher: The Downing Street Years - IMDb Thatcher: The Downing Street Years - IMDb

Geoffrey Howe reviewed the book in the Financial Times, Nigel Lawson in the Evening Standard, Douglas Hurd in The Spectator, Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail and Bernard Ingham in the Daily Express. The producers of this book obviously believed that it was better reviewed unread. With that judgment I have a good deal of sympathy, although many parts of the narrative, even when erstwhile colleagues are not being savaged, carry the reader along perfectly easily and even agreeably. About the avoidance of reviewers' normal appraisal, however, there can be no doubt. The concentration on the 'hype' of a dramatic release, combined with the ineffective hysteria of the serialising newspaper about the protection of its own monopoly, meant that the book was not available for reviewers until mid-morning of the day before publication last Monday. Today's Best Nonfiction. Mind Over Matter, The Downing Street Years, Natasha's Story, Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate, D-Day 1944Following the resignation of David Cameron on 24th June 2016, Theresa May became the second female Prime Minister of Britain, taking office on 13th July. Boris Johnson replaced her in 2019, going on to win a landslide election in December that year. After his resignation, in 2022 Liz Truss became the UK’s third female Prime Minister and the shortest serving Prime Minister to date. She resigned just 45 days later, to be replaced by Rishi Sunak. The term "Downing Street" is also used as a metonym for the Prime Minister or the British Government more generally. Margaret Thatcher". Breakfast with Frost (Interview). Interviewed by David Frost. London: BBC. 17 October 1993. What a self-righteous old bag.... please don't state that she did a lot of good for the country as she, and her cronies, have been responsible for the majority of avarice and greed that exists in our country today. What was the ratio divide between medical science and defence budgets? I'd love to know the ratio between expenditure on defence and expenditure on medical research while the two leaders were in power? Are you with me?