The Downing Street Years is a memoir by Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, covering her premiership of 1979 to 1990.

[6] However, by 23 March Wyatt was writing that Thatcher "seemed to be all over the shop now with her book" and he said to Murdoch that he thought she was going to do a deal with him but "Now she is apparently putting out tenders to publishers and agents".

[9] Mark Thatcher openly talked of getting eight, ten or even twenty million for his mother's memoirs, which was more than Murdoch was willing to pay.

"[11] Murdoch told Wyatt later that day: "None of her friends dare tell her what a dreadful mess Mark is making of her affairs"[11] However, in June the Maxwell deal fell through and a week after this Mrs Thatcher signed to Marvin Josephson, an American agent, who quickly accepted a £3.5 million deal with HarperCollins for two books to be published in 1993 and 1995.

[10] Some sources believe that Thatcher wrote at least part of the book at the Manor House Hotel, in Castle Combe, in the Full Glass bar.

[12][13] The Downing Street Years were published on 18 October 1993, timed to coincide with the Conservative Party conference.

After Major made a speech saying he was going "back to basics", Thatcher praised him for returning to "the true path of Conservatism".

Thatcher was interviewed with David Frost on Breakfast with Frost about her memoirs,[15] and she promoted her book with radio and television interviews, book signings, a question and answer session at the Barbican chaired by Jeffrey Archer and a four-part BBC television series.

It is a shockingly ungenerous book, shot through with gratuitously withering comments not only about people like Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe whom she had some cause to feel bitter about, but also about other inoffensive colleagues who had served her well.