Margaret Thatcher – the 100th Anniversary | How To Academy
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Tue, 14 October 2025

7:30 pm - 8:45 pm BST

Margaret Thatcher – the 100th Anniversary

Michael Portillo Meets Charles Moore

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For the 100th anniversary of her birth, Margaret Thatcher’s biographer Charles Moore joins Michael Portillo to present a portrait of a woman who changed Britain and the world.

Whether you love her or loathe her, there is no question that Margaret Thatcher was the most important politician of her age – and continues to exert a profound influence on our country and politics today.

Charles Moore is her definitive biographer: a political columnist for the Telegraph during her first and second governments and editor of the Spectator between 1984-90, he had unique access to her private and governmental papers and interviewed her family, colleagues, and Thatcher herself to ensure that his history of her life is unsurpassed.

Michael Portillo began working for the Conservatives in 1976, briefed Thatcher in the 1979 election and went on to be a special adviser, whip, and minister in her governments, later serving as a Secretary of State under John Major and himself  standing for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

Now Charles and Michael join us to present an insider’s portrait of Thatcher’s life and political leadership, revealing the full complexities of character. From her early years and rise to power, through her transformative tenure as Prime Minister, to her final days, this is a unique and definitive account of one of the most influential global figures of the twentieth century.

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Praise for Charles Moore’s 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’ – Anne Applebaum, Daily Telegraph

‘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.’ – Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

‘One of the great biographical achievements of our times’ – Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

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Michael Portillo

Politician and Broadcaster

Michael Portillo attended Harrow County grammar school and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read history. He worked for the Conservative Party and for government ministers between 1976 and 1983. He entered the House of Commons in 1984. He was a minister for eleven years and had three positions in the Cabinet, including Secretary of State for Defence. He lost his seat at the 1997 election, and began to develop a career in the media. He returned to the Commons between 2000 and 2005, was shadow Chancellor, and contested the leadership of the party in 2001, unsuccessfully. Since leaving politics, he has devoted himself to writing and broadcasting. He is a regular on both BBC 1’s sardonic political “This Week” programme and Radio 4’s “The Moral Maze”. He has made radio and television documentaries on a wide range of subjects, including eight series of “Great British Railway Journeys”, five series on the continent of Europe, and two in the United States, for BBC2. In 2008 he chaired the judges of the Man Booker prize, and chaired the Art Fund prize for museums and galleries in 2011.

Charles Moore

Columnist, Editor, and Biographer

Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher’s first and second governments. He was Editor of the Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. The first volume of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in 2013, won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and Political Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.

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