The third tranche of Margaret Thatcher's personal and party files has just been released at the Churchill Archive Centre in Cambridge.
Selected documents have been added to http://www.margaretthatcher.org, with many more to follow.
Topics include
- stresses & strains within the Conservative Party as it battled to carry through its transformative but initially unpopular economic agenda
- fear of Conservative MPs defecting to the new centre party, the SDP, particularly from a dissident backbench grouping nicknamed the "Gang of 25"
- MT's relations with newly-elected Ronald Reagan, who welcomed her to Washington as his first state visitor & doodled during a summit meeting in Ottawa
- Rupert Murdoch's purchase of The Times
- personal files showing the huge demands high office made on her, and some of the comic side too
There are introductory notes explaining what it all means.
Documents can be downloaded in PDF format, to be read online, precisely as they appear in the reading room.
