People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me Hardcover – 19 Apr 2018

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Review ------ [in] this special and important book... Slocock has done her former boss and women in general a great service in painting such a vivid, sympathetic picture of what it means to be powerful and female. --The Sunday Telegraph Allison Pearson An outstanding new biography... this remarkable, beautifully-written account of the decline and fall of Britain's first woman prime minister is a book about the deeply complex relationship between femininity and real, hard power: the clash between testosterone-driven male egos and a woman who had to manage them and simultaneously protect herself from them. It's a great read and I could not recommend it more highly. --Richard and Judy, Daily Express Much more than meets the eye in this book really interesting on women and power in the present day as well as Thatcher and her time. --Mishal Husain Wasn't that fascinating! Caroline Slocock, really worth getting her book, People Like Us. If you were to say, post 1945, which particular day would you want to walk straight into at the heart of politics and watch what was going on...I think you'd go with 22nd November 1990, wouldn't you? - the day Margaret Thatcher resigned, and Caroline was there! --Jeremy Vine This is a book of multiple fascinations. As an insider's view of the final phase of Margaret Thatcher's extraordinary premiership, it would succeed on its own, but Caroline Slocock's account is much, much more than that. As the first woman to work as a civil service private secretary at No. 10, her observations illuminate the place of women at the top end of public service in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is also deeply interesting on how to keep civil service impartiality in a No. 10 suffused with ideology. People Like Us is as rich in its human story as it is with the high politics. Historians will dip into People Like Us as if from a well. --Peter Hennessy The most striking part of the book is the description of the day she resigned...which is very hard to read almost, it s very emotional...very worth reading. --Andrew Marr, Start the Week This is more than just the story quite familiar in powerful people of a character who is much nicer in private than in public. It is part of a bigger narrative.... The book makes the reader think about wider questions. Why is it that the three most striking characters in British public life in the past 50 years Margaret Thatcher, Diana, Princess of Wales and the Queen have been women? Is it mere rarity value? Or is it because though each is so different from the others there is something about being female that touches reality more closely? --Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher's official biographer, The Telegraph People Like Us is an important part of Thatcher studies. --Adam Boulton, Sky News Anyone interested in Margaret Thatcher should get hold of this book. --Andrew Gimson A thought-provoking memoir. --Ysenda Maxtone-Graham, Daily Mail's Book of the Week This is an excellent, highly readable memoir which really does shed new light on the Iron Lady. --Chris Hallam Full of fascinating in into the daily life of No 10. Poignant, hugely interesting [with] superb personal accounts. --Pennant Magazine A unique, unwarty political portrait. --The Spectator For a fresh look at a much-mythologised woman, try People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me by Caroline Slocock, Mrs Thatcher's private secretary for her last 18 months in office. Although she did not agree with her boss politically, Slocock came to admire her profoundly, and asks why this trailblazing woman in power was sentenced by feminists of her day to a kind of sexual excommunication. --the Daily Telegraph, Best Books of 2018 It's hugely interesting on feminism and women in power and the impossible standards men (and other women) hold women to. Definitely worth a read! --Stella Duffy, co-founder Women's Equality Party She was no feminist but this book reveals that Margaret Thatcher was much more complex than her public persona would convey. Caroline Slocock's unique in challenges us to reassess our first woman Prime Minister and reflect on the misogynistic way women in power and public life are still treated. Margaret Thatcher was no sister to me, but after reading this book I feel I can be a sister to her. --Sam Smethers, chief executive, Fawcett Society People Like Us is an important part of Thatcher studies.--Adam Boulton, Sky News The most striking part of I thought of the book is the description of the day she resigned...which is very hard to read almost, it s very emotional...very worth reading.--Andrew Marr, Start the Week Anyone interested in Margaret Thatcher should get hold of this book. --Andrew Gimson This is more than just the story quite familiar in powerful people of a character who is much nicer in private than in public. It is part of a bigger narrative.... The book makes the reader think about wider questions. Why is it that the three most striking characters in British public life in the past 50 years Margaret Thatcher, Diana, Princess of Wales and the Queen have been women? Is it mere rarity value? Or is it because though each is so different from the others there is something about being female that touches reality more closely? --Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher's official biographer, The Telegraph About the Author ---------------- Caroline Slocock was the first woman Private Secretary at No. 10 and was Private Secretary (Home Affairs) between 1989 to 1991 to Margaret Thatcher and John Major. After leaving No. 10, she worked to change the culture and working practices of the Treasury, which many women saw as a barrier to their advancement, and went on to reform the public expenditure system and public services. At the Department for Education and Skills, she oversaw a national expansion of childcare and nursery education. Between 2002 and 2007, she was the chief executive of the Equal rtunities Commission, the statutory body that promoted equal rtunities for women and men, and helped achieve significant advances, though many challenges remain. She currently runs a think tank and a leadership network dedicated to improving services and strengthening communities. She is the author of many publications on this theme and is a regular commentator in the media. She lives in London and Suffolk and is married to the crime writer John Nightingale, with two daughters.