Essential Margaret Thatcher

Welcome to the official website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the largest contemporary history site of its kind.

This site offers free access to thousands of documents—many of them previously unpublished—relating to Margaret Thatcher and world events during the last thirty years.

Overview

In addition to the database categories below, there is also a brief biography and a chronology of key events.

Archive
Declassified historical documents from Margaret Thatcher's personal files and from public and private archives in Britain and the United States.
Speeches, interviews, etc.
Complete listing of every public statement by Margaret Thatcher 1945-90, and texts of most, plus a selection since.
Multimedia
Video and audio items from British and American sources.
Chronology
Comprehensive timeline of events in Margaret Thatcher's life & career.
Commentary
Journalism, academic articles, book extracts & pamphlets.
Children
Who was Margaret Thatcher and what did she do? [page for children]

How can I search?

All the documents on the site have been indexed by hand under subject headings, so searches by subject reliably find all (and only) relevant material.

All the documents on the site are graded by importance or rank (key, major, minor, trivial), so that you can focus on key documents or eliminate minor items.

You can search easily by date or period, or any word occurring in the text.

Guides to archive documents

This is mainly a site devoted to declassified secret documents. There are a lot of them.

Guides to some of the most important can be found on featured pages.