Guardian News and Media/London
Author Hilary Mantel has delivered a defiant response to criticism from Tory MPs and rightwing commentators of her imagined account of the killing of Margaret Thatcher by an IRA sniper. Mantel’s new short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher - August 6th 1983, prompted outrage after it was published by the Guardian over the weekend.
Mantel, who had expected a backlash against the story, said yesterday it would be “unconscionable” to regard such a fictional account as off-limits, as her critics have suggested.
The Daily Telegraph had refused to publish the story even after it paid a substantial sum to secure the exclusive rights. Tory MP Conor Burns told the Sunday Times that the story represented a grave offence to the victims of the IRA. “I also never cease to be amazed by the disordered psyche of some on the left,” he said. Fellow Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries told the Daily Mail she was “gutted” because she was such a fan of Mantel’s writing. “It is shocking as it is so close (to Thatcher’s death) and she still has living family and children. It is about a character whose demise is so recent.”
Mail columnist Stephen Glover dismissed the story as “dangerous nonsense”. He said: “Mantel’s contribution is peculiarly damaging because, while she appears so mild-mannered, her message is interpretable as a deadly one. If you don’t like your democratically elected leaders, who operate within the rule of law, you can always think about assassinating them.”
Lord Bell, a former adviser to Thatcher, suggested that the police should investigate. Mantel was asked about the criticism on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week. She said: “I think it would be unconscionable to say this is too dark, we can’t examine it. We can’t be running away from history. We have to face it head-on, because the repercussions of Thatcher’s reign have fed the nation. It is still resonating. Whatever your view of her she was a shaper of history.” Mantel said her story was an examination of why Thatcher “aroused such visceral passion in so many people”. She said: “The two people (in the story) who are looking down at her from the window both agree on the desirability and propriety of the desirability of shooting her there and then, but they have to argue about the reason for doing it while taking tea together.
“I did want to examine that interface between politics and personality which is so marked in her case. She is a marvellous person to put into fiction because of the contradictions that run straight through her personality. You always feel she was a walking argument.”
In an interview in the Guardian on Saturday, Mantel said the inspiration for the story came from the day in 1983 when she spotted an unguarded Thatcher from the window of her Windsor flat and fantasised about killing her. “When I think of her, I can still feel that boiling detestation. She did longstanding damage in many areas of national life, but I am not either of (the two characters) in that room. I am standing by the window with the notebook. I never voted for her, but I can stand back and appreciate her as a phenomenon. As a citizen, I suffered from her but, as a writer, I benefited.”