Maggie & Ted Tickets

About Maggie & Ted

The running feud between Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath began in 1975 – when she successfully challenged him for the leadership of the Conservative Party – and did not fade until almost a quarter of a century later. Throughout the numerous, unsparing challenges she faced during those turbulent years – the relentless demands of rebuilding a demoralised opposition in the mid 1970s, or the civil disturbances, unemployment and international crises of the early 1980s – he was always to be found – outspoken, unforgiving and bitterly hostile – at the very vanguard of her critics. Whenever Labour and the Liberals failed to provide a vigorous and effective opposition to her monetarist policies (which they generally did), he could be relied upon to do their job for them, with interest. It was always front-page stuff too – real Box Office. In later years, their growing divergence of views on Europe would widen into a schism – a schism that would soon come to define, to disrupt and, ultimately, to destroy the character, the coherence and the very fabric of the party they had both once led. Michael McManus knew both Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, so he writes from first-hand experience. Some of this play is established fact, some conjecture – but the conjecture is always consistent with the facts. It records the origins, the development and the denouement of a remarkable political relationship that continues to define our political life today.