经济学人142:英国政治 一本记录撒切尔夫人传奇人生的传记

　　British politics

英国政治

She came, she saw, she conquered

她来过，领略过，征服过

A great biography of an extraordinary life

一本记录撒切尔夫人传奇人生的传记

Margaret Thatcher 1—The Authorised Biography, Volume I: From Grantham to the Falklands. By Charles Moore.

玛格丽特撒切尔授权传记，卷一：从格兰瑟姆市到福克兰群岛》作者：查尔斯摩尔

IT HELPS to be lucky if you are a politician and Margaret Thatcher was luckier than most: lucky that she came to power when the old order was crumbling 2 and lucky that her opponents were so feeble. Now she is proving to be lucky in death. First came a semi-state funeral that had the British establishment on bended knee and the British public out on the streets; now comes the first volume of an authorised biography that may well turn out to be one of the great lives of modern times.

政客运气总是比常人要好。玛格丽特撒切尔比大多数的政客运气都还要好：在她上台之际，旧秩序正值崩溃，而她的对手也不堪一击。现在，她连死亡都是幸运的。首先是一个准国葬，葬礼上英国政要皆屈膝以示敬意，而英国民众纷纷在沿街表达他们的悼念之情。现在则是她授权的传记第一卷的出版发行，这部传记很有可能成为现代最伟大的著作之一。

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This first volume takes the story from Mrs Thatcher's childhood above a grocer's shop in Grantham to victory in the Falklands war in 1982. A second volume, “Herself Alone”, will tell the rest of the story. Charles Moore, a veteran journalist and former editor of the weekly Spectator magazine and the Daily Telegraph, is proving the ideal biographer. He has spent 16 years reading Mrs Thatcher's private papers, to which he had unique access, and interviewing everyone who mattered. But he also possesses the literary panache 3 to bring the dullest sources to life. He is close to his subject both ideologically 5 and personally. But he also acknowledges that she could be impossible, and often was: hectoring, bullying 6 and interfering 7.

在传记中，第一卷讲述了撒切尔夫人从格兰瑟姆市一个零售商女儿成长为赢得1982年马岛战争的铁娘子的故事。第二卷《她自己》将讲述之后的故事。作为周刊《旁观者》和《每日电讯报》的资深记者兼前任编辑，查尔斯摩尔就是一个完美的传记作者。充分利用自己查阅撒切尔夫人私人文件的特权，摩尔花费了16年的时间来研究这些文件，并采访每一个相关人员。但（所幸）他也拥有卓越的文学才华，能够将最枯燥的材料写得栩栩如生。无论在思想上，还是私人交情上，摩尔都与撒切尔夫人十分亲近。但他也承认，她有时候的确很难应付，并且她通常喜欢颐指气使、恃强凌弱、事事干涉。

The first 200-odd pages are hard-going. As a person rather than a politician she is of limited interest. She had no intellectual hinterland and was quite content to repeat the clichés of the stockbroker 8 belt. If she had a sense of humour, nobody has ever found it. Mrs Thatcher's early career—from the scholarship to Oxford 9, an early love affair, a job as an industrial chemist and her first forays into Conservative politics—is hardly the stuff of high drama. Mr Moore does a good job of evoking 10 the atmosphere of post-war Britain. He reveals that Denis Thatcher, whom she married in 1951, once repaired to South Africa for two months and contemplated 11 divorcing her. Still, few readers will wish this section were longer.

最开始200多页的内容读起来索然无味。褪去政治家身份的撒切尔，与常人并无异处。她没有任何科研成果，并且满足于重复富人区的陈词滥调。她没有幽默感。她的早年生涯—拿到牛津大学奖学金，年轻时的爱恋，工业化学家的工作，第一次闯进了保守党阵营——都不是多少精彩的故事。在讲述这段时间内的事情过程中，摩尔很好地营造了一种二战后英国的氛围。他大爆料， 1951年娶了她的丹尼斯撒切尔，曾经在南非呆过两个月，考虑着是否要与她离婚。尽管如此，很少有读者想继续探究下去。

Things really take off with Mrs Thatcher's election as Conservative Party leader in 1975. Mr Moore brilliantly reconstructs the drama of those years. He reminds the reader of how big the stakes were in everything from industrial relations to the Falklands war. Mrs Thatcher was in an extraordinary position: “the oldest, grandest, in many people's eyes the stuffiest 12 political party in the world had chosen a leader whose combination of class, inexperience and sex would previously 13 have ruled her out.” But Mr Moore avoids the luxury of hindsight. Political events tumble over each other. Politicians grope about in the dark. Patterns emerge slowly.

1975年，撒切尔夫人被选为保守党领袖，从这开始故事才变得有意思起来。摩尔十分精彩地重现了这段流光岁月。他向读者展示了，从工业革命到马岛战争，所有事情都充满着巨大风险。与其他首相相比，撒切尔夫人的处境不同寻常：“世界上历史最悠久的、规模最庞大的、在许多人眼里最死板僵化的政党，选择了一位这样的领导人：在此之前她会因为来自底层阶级、缺乏经验、身为女性，而被直接排除在外。”不过摩尔避免了大篇幅的“后知后觉”。毕竟，政治问题之间总会有冲突，政客们也是摸着石头过河，政治模式的出现总需要时间。

Margaret Thatcher grows with the turning of the pages. She summons up extraordinary personal resources not just to break with the old order but to put a new one in its place. None of this was easy. The entire Thatcherite project was frequently in danger of faltering 14, as unemployment soared, cities burned and the ditherers conspired 15. The situation became so dire 16 in 1981 that Mrs Thatcher's advisers 17 sent her a memo 18 castigating 19 her management style and warning that she would soon be joining Edward Heath on the backbenches.

随着时间的推移，玛格丽特撒切尔也在变得更加老练成熟。她以常人少有的勇气与旧秩序决裂，同时打造新秩序。这两件事都不容易。所有这些撒切尔主义项目经常面临各种垮台的危险，因为失业率急速增长，各大城市情况堪忧，反对者纷纷密谋反叛。情况发展到1981年已经十分危急，连撒切尔夫人的顾问也都向她寄去一份简报，激烈指责她的管理方式，并警告说她可能很快就加入爱德华希思成为后座议员了。

How did she manage all this Mr Moore shows that it took more than ideological 4 certainty and personal stubbornness. Mrs Thatcher had a gift for seeing when the time was ripe and when it was not. She had a natural bond with what Richard Nixon called the silent majority. She had an actor's gift for putting on a good show. Mrs Thatcher's opponents repeatedly played into her hands: Heath, the titular 20 leader of the Tory ditherers, known as the “wets”, was a repulsive 21 figure who grew more repulsive with age and Michael Foot, the Labour leader, had an unfortunate habit of dressing 22 like a scarecrow.

然而她是怎样应对这些的呢？摩尔将其描述为远非坚定的意志和倔强的个性就足够。撒切尔夫人有着判断时机的良好禀赋。她与理查德尼克松所说的“沉默的大多数”之间有着天然纽带。她就像是一个天生的演员，与生俱来就擅长上演一出精彩的戏。撒切尔夫人的对手总会正中她的下怀：名义上保守党反对派的领袖希思，是著名的“温和派”，他的为人令人厌恶，而且越老越惹人烦，还有工党领袖迈克尔福特，他喜欢把自己打扮得像个稻草人一样，有这个习惯实在是不幸啊。

The book ends on a high note. Britain's victory in the Falklands war consolidated 23 Mrs Thatcher's hold over the Tory Party. The economy began to recover. And the Labour Party rendered itself unelectable. At the same time the seeds of her self- destruction were already apparent. It is not often that you can say of a 900-page book that it leaves you wanting to read more. But in this case it is true.

该书在高潮部分收了尾。英国在马岛战争中的胜利有效地巩固了撒切尔夫人对保守党的控制。经济也开始复苏。工党的糟糕表现也致使它们自身无法赢得选举胜利。不过，与此同时，撒切尔夫人也开始走下坡路了。人们很少会说，读完一本900页的书还觉得意犹未尽，但是这本传记就做到了。