Statecraft.: Strategies for a Changing World.

London: Harper Collins,, 2002. First edition, third impression, signed by Margaret Thatcher on the title page in her customary blue ink, an appealing association copy, with a letter from David Amess arranging the signing. Amess, Conservative MP for Basildon and Southend West from 1983 to 2021, was a strong Thatcherite. He is often seen as exemplifying the "Essex Man" stereotype, the working class convert to Thatcher's policies, an electoral base crucial to her election triumphs in the 1980s. Amess served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to another of Thatcher's core supporters, Michael Portillo. Amess's murder in October 2021 in a terrorist attack at his constituency surgery evoked national shock and international condemnation. He was the sixth MP to be murdered since the war. In his letter, dated 2 July 2002, Amess writes to Brenda and John Matthews: "Please find enclosed Margaret Thatcher's book as you requested, duly signed - something she was delighted to do. Please accept it as a gift. Lionel, who runs my office, went to her home and waited while she signed it". The recipients were family members, as Amess discusses the family grave where his mother will be buried and requests a death certificate. Dedicated to Ronald Reagan, Statecraft was Thatcher's last book, providing her analysis of foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. Published when she was in failing health, Thatcher signed far fewer copies of Statecraft than she did for her earlier volumes of autobiography. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, light brown endpapers. With dust jacket. A few clippings on Thatcher loosely inserted. Some spotting to top edge and jacket verso, jacket price-clipped, very good.