Margaret Hodge

Dame Margaret Hodge discusses her memoir Battleaxe, a candid reflection on her long career at the frontline of British politics. 

Born in Alexandria in 1944 to Jewish parents from Germany and Austria, Margaret arrived in England aged four – stateless, foreign, and an outsider. Those origins shaped everything. Her grandmother was murdered by the Nazis. Her grandfather was greeted as an enemy alien and then interned on British soil. Anti-racism was written into Hodge’s DNA. So was the instinct to battle back. Over more than fifty years as an elected representative – councillor, council leader, MP and minister – she fought on every front. 

She took on Nick Griffin and the BNP. Grilled Google and Amazon directors as chair of the Public Accounts Committee. And called Jeremy Corbyn an anti-semite to his face when he led her beloved party astray. But she also crusaded for working-class children as Britain’s first Children’s Minister, instituting Sure Start – a scheme which transformed the lives of thousands of families. Battleaxe is the record of a life unapologetically spent in the thick of it. 

Margaret Eve Hodge, Baroness Hodge of Barking DBE PC, is a British politician and life peer, who served as Member of Parliament for Barking from 1994-2024. She was the first Children’s Minister from 2003 to 2005, Minister for Universities from 2001-2003 and Minister for the Arts and the Creative Industries for the last years of the Labour Government. In 2010 she became the first elected Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and was also its first female Chair. She held the post for the full parliamentary term, retiring in 2015. In December 2024, she was appointed as the UK’s Anti-Corruption Champion.