The Bernard Ingham Diaries: January 1989 to December 1990

by Bernard Ingham

The ultimate insider, Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher's press secretary during her tenure at No.10. These eagerly anticipated diaries will shed light on the final, dramatic two years of her time as Prime Minister and detail the coming crises which saw her resign in November 1990. Her final days saw some of the most remarkable events in British political history, and Ingham was, for once, helpless to steer events. These diaries will come to be viewed as arguably amongst the most important primary source material about her unexpected fall from power.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Published June 11, 2019

Reviews

[Mancman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regardless of your political views, this book offers a great insight into the workings of government, the back biting nature of the game and a sense of the pressures at hand.
The best moments are candid insights, but these are too often hidden behind a party line, which is why I’m not rating this book higher.
It could, and perhaps should, have been more explosive. It’s a slight damp squib in that regard.

[Mark Kinver · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was one of my first political memories, and the ending of Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister stood large in my mind. It was historic; it was paradigm-shifting. Yet, the contemporaneous accounts in Sir Bernard’s diary allow me to view these events through anther lens, one of a personal perspective. The story remains gripping, but with a human face.

[Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although titled about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, Bernard Ingham’s highly entertaining diaries shed more of a light on the day-to-day of Thatcher’s Downing Street. With characteristic wit and no-nonsense attitude, Ingham constructs a picture of an energetic government with an indefatigable leader, even as her political fortunes sour.

Spanning from January 1989 to December 1990 (until Thatcher’s resignation and Ingham’s retirement as Senior Press Officer at No 10), Ingham’s book presents a long lost era of government. Where information was key and misinformation heresy. Where print and broadcast media ruled supreme and social media was not even on the horizon. There is a lot of valuable insight here on how government decisions were not only communicated, but also constructed and implemented. I came away feeling that a whole avenue of the Thatcher years had been opened up, quite an achievement given its well mowed lawn of historiography in recent years.

Highly recommended.

[Ravi Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of it I found boring but the parts towards the end, the actual downfall of Lady T were riveting. Another real eyewitness along with Alan Clark in his diaries.