Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship [Hardcover]

For decades historians have perpetuated the myth of a Churchillian relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, citing their longtime alliance as an example of the special bond between the United States and Britain. But, as Richard Aldous argues in this penetrating dual biography, Reagan and Thatcher clashed repeatedlyover the Falklands war, Grenada, and the SDI and nuclear weaponswhile carefully cultivating a harmonious image for the public and the press. With the stakes enormously high, these political titans struggled to work together to confront the greatest threat of their time: the USSR.Starred review. This is excellent revisionist history, giving another slant to the interaction of two political icons on the world stage.An interesting revisionist history, Aldous study should attract the foreign policy audience.Vivid, fast-paced and immensely readable, Richard Aldous' new book challenges conventional wisdom and prods us to rethink the 1980s.An important study, based on a wealth of recently-released documents, which puts the Thatcher-Reagan friendship in a wholy new (and more somber) light. It should be essential reading for anyone who cares about the history, the health and the future of the Anglo-American 'special relationship'.I cant speak for President Reagan, but Ive been both praised and pulverized by Margaret Thatcher and Richard Aldous seems to me to have captured the force of her personality. She did have an emotional understanding of Reagan and her of her that in its essence, in my judgement, was warmer than between Churchill and Roosevelt. But her fury was incandescent over the invasion of Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, as was the wimpiness of the initial American reaction to the seizure of the Falkland Islands. This is a valuable look behind the looking glass of public-relations politics of the special relationship.An iconic friendship, an uneasy alliancea revisionist account of the couple who ended the Coldlă9