Tag Archives: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher cover

I read The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher when it was first published in the Guardian. It’s the last short story in the Hilary Mantel anthology of the same name. At the time I thought that the title story was very good, a sort of wishful thinking tale, a what if… the sort of thing we all indulge in, but the rest of us don’t write them up as short stories, we get no further than a lovely dream. Believe me, if you were lucky enough not to have been an adult when Thatcher was inflicting her damnedest on the UK then you probably don’t realise how hated she was by so many of the population, eventually of course that feeling extended itself to her own work colleagues.

Anyway, I bought the book quite a wee while ago and having read all of the stories now I think that the ‘Assassination’ story is by far the best in the collection.

Jack always takes a while over reading short stories as he likes to think about each story when he gets to the end of it. I really don’t think that that is necessary with these ones as for me most of the stories aren’t saying anything particularly profound, as far as I’m concerned anyway, although some of the stories seem quite autobiographical, worryingly so in fact, still – it’s an entertaining read.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: August 6th 1983 by Hilary Mantel

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On Saturday the Guardian review published Hilary Mantel’s new short story about the assassination of Margaret Thatcher, if you’re interested you can read it here.

Mantel was inspired to write the story after catching a glimpse of Thatcher from her window. You can read about it here. She had some difficulties in working the whole thing into a short story and when she managed it it was sold to The Telegraph for tens of thousands of pounds apparently. Obviously the subject matter doesn’t appeal to your average right-wing Telegraph reader. So the Guardian published it instead.

Now the Conservatives are complaining that the short story should never have been published, and there are talks of involving the police. It seems that nowadays we are not to be allowed to even think about things which might possibly upset some people on the extreme right. You can read about Hilary Mantel’s reaction here.

Thinking about doing something doesn’t come close to actually doing it, neither is writing about it. If it were I would have spent most of my life in jail!