The next lunchtime seminar is Wednesday 20th, at 1pm, in Armstrong 1.04.
John Bagnall (History) will be talking to us about :
The New Official History: Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands Crisis
‘Earlier this year, Charles Moore released the second of his three volume official biography of Margaret Thatcher. Moore was given unrivalled access to, not only Thatcher herself, but her wealth of private papers concerning her time as British Prime Minister. His first volume, published in 2013, ended with the Falklands Affair of 1982 and the second volume, picks up from this point and continues until the end of her time in office. The Falklands Affair was a dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. The dispute garnered international tension when a nine week conflict was fought between the two nations in 1982. Moore’s work uses Thatcher’s own papers and memory of the affair to give a new account of the conflict. As this work was undertaken before the source material was released for public research purposes, it is at the forefront of study of 1980s British Political history.
This paper aims to examine what Moore adds to the existing knowledge of the Falklands Affair in the context of Lawrence Freedman’s two volume Official History of the Falklands Campaign published in 2005. Freedman too was given access to source material from government departments before it was released to the public and produced, at the time, the most comprehensive study of the Falklands Campaign that had been done. This paper compares the work done by Moore to the work of Freedman to highlight what new insights Moore has offered on the Falklands Affair. This paper scrutinises the source material used by each author as well as their methodologies and conclusion to produce an analysis of how much has been added by Moore to our understanding of one of the most crucial aspects of Thatcher’s Britain, the Falklands Affair.’
Come along for discussion, tea, coffee and biscuits!