“Of all the elements combined in the complex of signs labelled Margaret Thatcher, it is her voice that sums up the ambiguity of the entire construct. She coos like a dove, hisses like a serpent, bays like a hound [in a contrived upper-class accent] reminiscent not of real toffs but of Wodehouse aunts.”—Angela Carter in The New Statesman in 1983.

“Mrs. Thatcher is the only interesting thing about British power politics; and the only interesting thing about Mrs. Thatcher is that she isn’t a man. Tricked out with the same achievements, the same style and ‘vision,’ a Marvyn or a Marmaduke Thatcher would be as dull as rain, as dull as London traffic, as dull as the phosphorescent prosperity, the boutique squalor of Thatcher’s England (or its southeastern quadrant.)….British politics has long ceased to be sexy. But for the time being, at least, it does have plenty of gender.”—Martin Amis, “A PM, A President, and a First Lady,” published in Elle in 1989.

“The essential fact is that quite recently we in this country, unlike you in the United States, have had some socialism along with its inevitable adjuncts, bureaucracy and inefficiency. The British people have seen the future, found it doesn’t work, and want to go somewhere else.”—Kingsley Amis on Thatcher’s rise to power in The New York Review of Books in 1979.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more shameful. It was idiotic; infantile on my part.”–Harold Pinter on voting for Thatcher in The New Statesman in 1999.

“I’m talking about you-know-who,” Valance explained helpfully. “Torture. Maggie the Bitch.” Oh. “She’s radical all right. What she wants—what she actually thinks she can fucking achieve—is literally to invent a whole goddamn new middle class in this country. Get rid of the woolly incompetent buggers from fucking Surrey and Hampshire, and bring in the new. People without background, without history. Hungry people. People who really want, and who know that with her, they bloody well get. Nobody’s ever tried to replace a whole fucking class befirem and the amazing thing is she might just do it if they don’t get her first….And it’s not just businessmen,” Valance said slurry. “The intellectuals, too. Out with the whole faggoty crew. In with the hungry guys with the wrong education. New professors, new painters, the lot. It’s a bloody revolution. Newness coming into this country that’s stuffed full of fucking old corpses. It’s going to be something to see. It already is.”—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses