Margaret Thatcher eclipses Churchill in Dictionary of National Biography

New biography added to authoritative reference work gives the UK’s first female prime minister more space than anybody but Shakespeare and Elizabeth I

Margaret Thatcher has been added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, commanding more space in the venerable reference work than any other Briton apart from Shakespeare and Elizabeth I. Eclipsing records for Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and Henry VIII, historian David Cannadine’s biography of Britain’s first female PM is the third longest of the 60,000-plus entries in the 72m-word work.

Thatcher’s listing details her rise to power, from Lincolnshire grocer’s daughter to global political force during the cold war. Cannadine is robust in his 30,000-word assessment of Thatcher’s career, noting that as well as being one of the few politicians to lend their name to a political doctrine – Thatcherism – her blunt approach to leadership led to ferocious clashes from the miners’ strike to the poll tax riots. Her front and backbenchers in parliament knew a leader who it was punishing to cross.

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