cover image Mrs. Thatcher's Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark

Mrs. Thatcher's Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark

Alan Clark. Farrar Straus Giroux, $30 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-374-13917-9

Clark was Minister of Trade (1986-89) and Minister of State at Defence (1989-92) under Margaret Thatcher, then under John Major. His highly irreverent, heavily annotated insider's record of British political events, clashes and personalities will hold the greatest fascination for readers intimately familiar with the British scene, though for sheer malicious reading pleasure the book has few peers. Depicting politics as an endless round of meetings, drudgery, jockeying for power, dealings with incompetents and mediocrities, Clark takes jabs at Thatcher (``somewhat blinkered''), Jeanne Kirkpatrick (``Anglophobe harridan''), Queen Elizabeth II (``Is she really rather dull and stupid?''). Amidst the high-level gossip and lecherous sexual comments, he also proffers opinions on serious matters such as military strategy in the Persian Gulf War and the Tory Party's declining fortunes. Photos. (Sept.)