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Few people alive have a greater insight into the personality of Margaret Thatcher than former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. He first met her in the 1960s when he was a close family friend and then, as an MP, knew her during her years of power. Aitken draws on his own diaries and on interviews with the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington to throw new light on the life of Britain’s most influential and controversial post-war political leader. He uses new material to show how Thatcher orchestrated the selling of military planes to the Saudis in what was the biggest export deal in British history; to reveal new details of the rows between Thatcher and her Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington; and to look at the uneasy relationship with Bernard Weatherill and the part it played in her downfall.

Aitken is author of 14 books including his award-winning biography of President Richard Nixon. He is a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Aitken was sentenced to prison for 18 months for perjury in the aftermath of a libel trial. The events stirred his interest in Christianity, and he went on to study the Bible and become a student of Christian theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He wrote two autobiographical books about this period, Pride and Perjury and Porridge and Passion.

Here, Aitken talks to journalist Stephen Glover.