The Downing Street Years, Signed by Margaret Thatcher, First Edition, 1993

Thatcher, Margaret. The Downing Street Years, New York: Harper/Collins, 1993. First Edition. Signed by Margaret Thatcher in blue pen on the publisher’s sticker, on free front endpaper. Octavo. Presented in original boards and dust jacket. 

Presented is a signed, first edition of Margaret Thatcher’s The Downing Street Years. Published in 1993 by Harper/Collins in New York, the memoir covers Thatcher’s premiership from 1979 to 1990. The book is presented in its original boards and pictorial dust jacket and is signed by Thatcher in blue pen on the publisher’s sticker, pasted to the free front endpaper.

Downing Street Years is a riveting first-hand account of the events and personalities of Thatcher's eleven years in power. Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to become prime minister of Britain and the first to lead a major Western power in modern times. Nicknamed “The Iron Lady” by a Soviet newspaper in 1976, she led her Conservative Party to three straight election wins and held office from May 1979 to November 1990,  longer than any other British politician in the 20th century. In Downing Street Years, she recalls the triumphs and the critical moments of her premiership, including her push to revitalize and recover Britain's failing economy, the Falklands War, the miners' strike, the Brighton bomb attack on her life by the IRA and later Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, the Westland Affair, and her unprecedented three election victories. 

She also speaks frankly about the personalities of many of the political and world leaders with whom she interacted, including her own ministers and foreign statesmen like President Ronald Reagan. Her partnership with Reagan was the driving force of a conservative revolution that transformed the political landscape of the West, achieved a crushing defeat of Communism, and so brought liberty and prosperity within the grasp of millions who had never known them.

Thatcher authored many books in her lifetime.  In Her Own Words, published in 1987, contains some of her greatest speeches. The Downing Street Years, published in 1993 and seen here, was her first memoir and focused solely on her premiership years. In Path to Power, her second memoir, published two years later, Thatcher wrote about the influences that shaped her early life.  In her 2002 book, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, Thatcher outlines her thoughts for political power and planning in the age of globalism. 

CONDITION:

Very good condition. Octavo, 914 pp. Illustrated from photographs. Presented in publisher’s blue paper hardback boards, with gilt titles and black cloth spine, and the original pictorial dust jacket. Bumping and small creases to spine of dust jacket. Signed by Margaret Thatcher in blue pen. Signature is legible and strong. Dimensions: 9 1/2" H x 6 1/2" W x 2 1/4" D.