Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born (as Margaret Roberts) 100 years ago, on 13 October 1925. In the years since she left Downing Street in 1990, her achievements and legacies have been widely discussed by political commentators. The extent to which she shaped both modern conservatism and New Labour is still debated by her political successors. […]

Philip Larkin, who was born 100 years ago, was a twentieth-century novelist, poet and music critic whose place among the immortals remains uncertain. Although Larkin’s writing was popular during his lifetime, his reputation was badly damaged by the revelation, in a posthumous edition of his letters, that he was an enthusiastic racist and misogynist. His […]