Hilary Mantel's Margaret Thatcher Assassination Story Premieres on Stage in Liverpool

A controversial short story by Dame Hilary Mantel titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher premiered on stage at the Liverpool Everyman theatre.

The story imagines a plot to kill the 1980s prime minister. Published in 2014, it drew sharp reactions. Playwright Alexandra Wood adapted it for the stage. She said Mantel chose the title to provoke. "Hilary Mantel, from what I've heard about her, was mischievous and she knew what she was doing and she was being provocative," Wood said. But the play avoids the title's apparent simplicity.

Liverpool still harbors resentment toward Lady Thatcher. The city blamed her for its industrial decline, unemployment and neglect in the 1980s. Wood said the production offers opponents of the former prime minister just 30 seconds of wish fulfillment before complicating the narrative.

Set in 1983, the play follows a sniper from Liverpool who plans to murder Thatcher. He waits at a window in Windsor after a woman lets him into her flat, mistaking him for a plumber.

Mantel got the idea from spotting Thatcher outside her own Windsor flat. The prime minister had just left a nearby hospital after an eye operation. "I thought, if I wasn't me, if I was someone else, she'd be dead," she told the Guardian. Mantel described her own "boiling detestation" for Lady Thatcher but called her "a fantastic character" and "the very stuff of drama."

Mantel set the story a year before the IRA bombed the Brighton hotel hosting the Conservative Party conference. The piece angered Thatcher's supporters. Lord Tebbit, whose wife was paralyzed in the blast, called it a "sick book from a sick mind." Bernard Ingham, her former press secretary, labeled it "vindictive."

Lady Thatcher died in 2013 after a stroke. Mantel, best known for Wolf Hall and a two-time Booker Prize winner, died in 2022.

Jade Marsden, a former Conservative candidate for mayor of the Liverpool City Region, opposes the staging. "I recognise that we shouldn't be afraid to have debate and controversial plays in the arts," she said. "However, I think given the political tensions in the world and the increase in violence towards politicians, albeit that Margaret Thatcher has already passed, I don't think it should be encouraged."

Wood insisted the play does not incite violence. "The play in no way advocates assassinating our political leaders, or anyone," she said.

In the drama, assassin Brendan holds Caroline, the flat's resident, captive. They debate his motives, the era's politics and their backgrounds. Brendan claims to act for the Irish Republican cause and protests Thatcher's treatment of Liverpool. Caroline dislikes Thatcher too but argues violence is not the answer.

Wood said the play explores politics and disagreement. "What politics is and how we can disagree with one another - and that's OK, it doesn't mean you need to resort to violence," she said. It also addresses responses to powerlessness.

"This act of terrorism feels like an act of desperation to be heard and to mean something and to have some kind of impact on the world," Wood said. "Caroline is someone who is fairly passive until she encounters this man who has such strong convictions that he's willing to murder someone for them. I'm interested in those two ends of the spectrum, and where and how they might influence one another."

Violence against politicians has risen since 2014, with attacks in the US and UK. Director John Young noted murders of UK politicians on the streets. He spoke before a man was charged with trying to assassinate US President Donald Trump at last month's White House Correspondents' Dinner, the third attempt on Trump.

"The idea of an individual who feels so disenfranchised and so disconnected to a society, and so angry and so passionate that they think killing a politician is an answer to that problem - that happens and continues to happen, and that threat looms over us," Young said. He criticized quick judgments that hinder debate. Lady Thatcher and her fictional assassin serve as an entry point to broader issues.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher runs at Liverpool Everyman until May 23.