David Cannadine: Margaret Thatcher. A Life and Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

• Stefan A. Eick

It was in January 2017, three and a half years after her death, that Margaret Thatcher entered the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, “the national record of more than 58,000 men and women (all deceased) who’ve shaped British history and culture.” Composed by its General Editor, Sir David Cannadine, and coming in at over 33,000 words, the entry is one of the longest in the ODNB, on a par with those of British luminaries like William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill. Given the usual literary quality of the ODNB entries, it may not seem utterly surprising that Cannadine’s almost unaltered entry was then also published in print.