91Èȱ¬

Richard Cottan has carved out a successful career as a screenwriter, with a number of a high profile programmes to his name including Men Only starring Martin Freeman and Marc Warren, Hancock & Joan with Ken Stott and Maxine Peake and, most recently, Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. However, one of the biggest challenges of his career has been Margaret, and here Richard writes about how and why he agreed to take on the project.

In his book The View From Number 11 Nigel Lawson says at one point: "No Conservative Prime Minister since Neville Chamberlain in 1940 had left office other than at the behest of either the electorate or the doctors. How was it that the first to be obliged to do so was Margaret Thatcher, one of the most dominant Prime Ministers ever, in vigorous health, enjoying a huge majority in the House of Commons, and with a record of three election victories and no defeats? That is the real question."

And that's what interested me. But rather than an obviously political answer, I was more interested in the personal. Who was this woman? How had she got to where she was? What had it cost her and those around her? What had power – achieved, as a woman, in the face of apparently insurmountable odds – done to her? What does power do to any long term leader?

In a sense I was looking more to Shakespeare than to Andrew Marr. The political beats of Margaret Thatcher's reign have been covered endlessly in documentary form.

What I was trying to do was to take the downfall as the narrative spine of a more personal story. Then, within that, to flashback to key moments of her rise – moments in which she faced personal crises and fought personal battles – and discover how the strength, determination and unbending will that drove her to power, became corrupted into the blind, insular, almost tyrannical arrogance that precipitated her fall.

I undertook extensive research when I agreed to take on the project and I read pretty much every book that has so far been written on the Thatcher phenomenon, including all the participants' personal accounts of the downfall.

I also interviewed several people who were present at key moments, including Cecil Parkinson, Charles Powell, Cynthia Crawford and John Whittingdale.

When writing the script the biggest challenge was deciding what to leave out.

I'm sure there will be much debate about the blurring between fact and fiction but I consider this to be a drama not a documentary and, as Oliver Stone said recently: "Good historians understand that dramatists who deal with history have a licence historians don't have".

Portraying real life people always requires an act of faith; a point where you just have to jump in. You are only ever going to write your version of a character; in the end you just have to have the confidence, however misguided, to let them start talking and hope the research stands you in good stead.