Margaret Thatcher

Moore's great gift is his ability to make Thatcher's story fresh again, and above all to remind us of how odd she was ... The thoroughness of the research, the hundreds of interviews, and above all the access to her family and friends, enabled [him] to produce a multifaceted picture of a compelling life ... Although this is very much a narrative biography, it is also a book about ideas: where they come from, how they affect people and how they get shaped into policies ... one of the definitive books about Britain in the late twentieth century

Anne Applebaum, Daily Telegraph

Moore's project is a study of detailed depth, and fine and transparent judgements, which rises to the largeness of a figure and a time that were of world significance

John Lloyd, Financial Times

One of the great biographical achievements of our times

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

One of the most thrilling, comprehensive, fair-minded and elegantly written biographies of modern times. It is full of complex argument, and a very large cast, but it is a joy to read

Andrew Marr, New Statesman

Reviewers are supposed never to use the word "definitive" about a history book or biography, but with Charles Moore's life of Margaret Thatcher, one has no other option. ... an absolute masterpiece of the biographer's art

Andrew Roberts, Daily Telegraph

This is a magnificent political biography which takes its place next to Robert Blake's Disraeli and Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson on the highest level ... extraordinarily compelling

Philip Hensher, Spectator

Moore has produced a biography so masterly - so packed with fascinating detail, with such a strong narrative drive, propelled by a central character who is at the same time both very bizarre and very conventional - that it comes as close as biography can come to being a work of art ... One of the many strengths of his book is that it never loses sight of just how unusual she was, in terms of both her personal psychology and her place in public life ... This book is a triumph of diligence [and] of narrative art and human understanding, at its centre a peculiar force of nature, never to be repeated

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday