It is not just authorized, but authoritative. Indeed, I venture to say that Mr. Moore’s 'Margaret Thatcher' is one of the greatest political biographies ever written.
Moore is certainly on Thatcher’s side. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he had a distinguished career in the Conservative media as the editor of the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph. But he is both sympathetic and balanced, never a sycophant.
Moore’s writing is mostly restrained and cool, a nice corrective to Thatcher’s overheated personality. But when he allows himself to be more subjective, his language can be a touch Tory-triumphalist.
His mastery of the vast range of topics with which Thatcher herself had to grapple is absolute, his marshaling of evidence adroit, and his judgments deliberate and fair. Moore remains on target to produce the definitive 'case for the defense' of this titanic and still controversial figure.
Moore's biography is a superb achievement: an authoritative, readable, humane account that reveals some disagreement with Thatcher's policies but also a thoroughgoing effort to understand her perspective.
