The second half of Thatcher’s tenure was marked by an inextinguishable controversy over Britain’s relationship with the European Community (EC). In 1984 she succeeded, amid fierce opposition, in drastically reducing Britain’s contribution to the EC budget. After her third electoral victory in 1987, she adopted a steadily more hostile attitude toward European integration. She resisted “federalist” continental trends toward both a single currency and a deeper political union. Her traditionally pro-European party became divided, and a string of senior ministers left the Cabinet over the issue. When I think of her, I can still feel that boiling detestation. She did longstanding damage in many areas of national life, but I am not either of [the two characters] in that room. When, for a Guardian article in 2021, I asked Magee about the pseudonym, he said there was no hidden significance – it was a last-minute random choice. This is implausible. The IRA had stalked Thatcher since the 1981 hunger strikes. Brighton was a one-off opportunity that followed elaborate planning: scouts had surveilled previous party conferences and a construction engineer had inspected the Grand’s architecture. And in the title story, a chilling, fable-like “counterfactual” set in 1983 — in which a sniper plans to assassinate Margaret Thatcher from a window as she leaves a private hospital where she’s just had eye surgery (the real Thatcher did have exactly such surgery in 1983, but died of natural causes in 2013) — it will be hard for younger non-Brits to work out why references to Thatcher’s “handbag” can still sound so noirishly hilarious, or why the nameless assassin’s contemptuous mention of the way the Iron Lady “toddles” about in public should so immediately and ghoulishly conjure the lady, in all her steely, handbag-gripping, lower-middle-class glory.

He (Neave) was coming in on the heels of Mason to settle the Northern problem, and made Mason look like a lamb. He wanted to bring in more Special Air Service, and take the war to the enemy. [6] Tominey, Camilla (21 December 2020). "Lady Margaret Tebbit, survivor of Brighton bombing, dies aged 86". Archived from the original on 20 January 2021. Was she freed by Thatcher's death? "I am concerned with respect. I'm not concerned with taste. I would have happily concluded the story in her lifetime but couldn't – it was my technical difficulty, not any delicacy. I believe in walking that line. You mustn't be too timid to risk getting it wrong." Comma’ more fully explores what nostalgia does to us. It looks at how local stories develop into urban legends – the existence of the ‘animal wrapped in a blanket’ at a large home that is strictly off-limits to the local children, and how a story about a looked-down-upon neighbour spat in a stew offered as an act of charity has continued to be told and assumed legendary status: Mantel’s contribution is peculiarly damaging because, while she appears so mild-mannered, her message is interpretable as a deadly one. If you don’t like your democratically elected leaders, who operate within the rule of law, you can always think about assassinating them.”Thatcher is a firm favourite of Telegraph readers. Th The aftermath of the IRA bombing at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, on October 12 1984. Picture: PA Wire. Every other story here makes a permanent dent in a reader's consciousness because of Mantel's striking language and plots twists, as well as the Twilight Zone-type mood she summons up. Mantel is drawn to grotesque characters and surreal situations even when writing, as she does here, of the modern world. Although they're miles apart in terms of style, I think she has a lot in common with Nathanael West, whose novels like Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust caught people behaving at their worst and laughed.

For American readers, not every mote of Mantel magic may transfix in equal measure. In “Harley Street” — a perverse little tale in which a dykey (and bonkers) medical receptionist torments a moron-girl phlebotomist named Bettina — much of the atmosphere of comic claustrophobia depends on our grasping everything about English society signified by the title. Not only the literal reference to that genteel north London thoroughfare where high-end doctors and specialists have discreetly catered to ailing members of the British upper classes since the 19th century. (Harley Street has had a rich symbolic presence — as sociological concept — in British storytelling from James and Woolf to the recent film “The King’s Speech.”) With the introduction of a disabled girl, "diminutive and crooked", working at the B&B, the story begins to show signs of more complicated authorial intent. There are suggestions of a subliminal affinity between the narrator and the girl, and eventually Mantel forces an unlikely series of events that make this resonance between them cumbersomely explicit. It diminishes the impact of an otherwise powerful piece. Speech to Finchley Conservatives (25th anniversary as MP) | Margaret Thatcher Foundation". www.margaretthatcher.org. This is signalled in the title short story when it sets the scene to help the reader understand what the Windsor streets looked like in 1983 – a time when ‘England had not succumbed to the smell of burning. The carbonised reek of the weekend barbecue was unknown…’The badly damaged Grand hotel in Brighton after an IRA bomb exploded in the building during the 1984 Conservative party conference. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images So, why has it taken Mantel so long to pull the trigger on this tale? "I just couldn't see how to get [the characters] to work together. They must examine their own myths and those of their communities. Each colludes for their own reasons."