As A Writer, You Owe It To

[margaret] Thatcher Could Fake Her Class Background, But She Couldn't Fake The Quality Of Her Mind.

[margaret Thatcher] Was Always Talking About What The Prudent Housewife Should Do And What The Prudent Housewife Knew.

[margaret Thatcher] Scorned And Despised Other Women, And Predicated Her Values Entirely On The Values Of Her Father, A Small Town Shopkeeper.

Insights Don't Usually Arrive At My Desk, But Go Into Notebooks When I'm On The Move. Or Half-asleep.

For Me, It Is About Using Everything That Is There And Using The Gaps In The Record, Figuring Out Why The Gaps Might Be There. And Then When You Move On To The Level Of What Historians Said, Laying The Interpretations Side By Side. You Also Have To Look Back At The Documents And Make Your Own Judgments. What The Record Says And What People Say About It. A Novelist Can Fill The Gaps In A Way That A Biographer Cannot.