MUST READS | Daily Mail Online

Margaret Thatcher

by Charles Moore (Penguin £18.99, 1,072 pp)

The third volume of Charles Moore’s masterly authorised biography of Britain’s longest-serving modern Prime Minister covers the years from Mrs Thatcher’s third election victory in 1987 to her death in 2013.

Enoch Powell remarked that ‘all political careers end in failure’, and Margaret Thatcher’s was no exception.

Despite the Conservative landslide, both voters and her own colleagues were weary of their leader’s assertive style and unbending convictions. 

‘Something had gone wrong in the political atmosphere,’ Moore writes, and that disenchantment would lead to a spectacular downfall.

His elegant account of Mrs Thatcher’s turbulent last years reads as compellingly as historical fiction.

Postscript

by Cecelia Ahern (HarperCollins £8.99, 400pp)

Cecelia Ahern’s best-selling debut novel, PS, I Love You, told the story of a young couple, Holly and Gerry (played by Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler in the 2007 film adaptation), whose love doesn’t end with Gerry’s sudden death, but continues through letters he leaves for her. 

Seven years on, life is going well for Holly: she is about to move in with her new partner, Gabriel. 

But the past returns to haunt her when she describes Gerry’s posthumous letters in a podcast.

The idea captures the imagination of a group of people with one thing in common: they are all facing their own mortality and want Holly’s help to devise a gesture of love for their bereaved families.

Ahern’s warm-hearted and surprisingly upbeat novel celebrates the enduring power of love.

Cilka’s Journey

by Heather Morris (Zaffre £8.99, 432pp)

The Tattooist Of Auschwitz, Morris’s first novel, which became a global best-seller, is based on the story of Lali Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor forced to tattoo identification numbers on the arms of the camp’s inmates.

‘Lale’, as he was called in the novel, described his experiences to Morris before his death in 2006.

Their talk often returned to Cilka Klein, a 16-year-old girl he met in Auschwitz, who was then incarcerated for ten years in the Siberian Gulag. 

This sequel is based on Cilka’s time in both Nazi and Soviet camps.

With its harrowing account of the stratagems inmates had to adopt to survive, Cilka’s Journey affirms its heroine’s unwavering will to survive in the worst of times.