The Long Walk to Finchley
2008 film by Niall MacCormick
Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, subtitled in the initial credits How Maggie Might Have Done It, is a 2008 BBC Four television drama based on the early political career of the young Margaret Thatcher (née Roberts), from her attempts to gain a seat in Dartford in 1949 via invasion to her first successful campaign to win a parliamentary seat, Finchley, in 1959. It also portrays her early relationship and marriage with Denis Thatcher.
It is directed by Niall MacCormick, produced by Madonna Baptiste and written by Tony Saint – it was made by Great Meadows Productions. Thatcher is played by Andrea Riseborough, Denis by Rory Kinnear and Edward Heath by Samuel West.
It was followed in February 2009 by Margaret, a drama on Thatcher's fall from power filmed in 2008–09, with Thatcher played by Lindsay Duncan.
Production
It was announced in August 2007, and filming began in London in the summer of 2007 (the black-and-white mock-newsreel footage of Roberts' electioneering in Dartford features the Church of Christ the King, and the terraced house from which she is picked up by Denis is the History Department of University College London).
It was to have been aired in February 2008, but was postponed to avoid offence to its subject (a scream of "fucking establishment!" by the Thatcher character had already been cut from the drama at her supporters' request, and replaced with "Damn their establishment!").
Reception
It was eventually broadcast at 9pm on Thursday 12 June 2008. Even prior to broadcast, the drama's portrayal of Thatcher as young and flirtatious has been criticised both by her supporters and opponents (one of the latter called the casting of Riseborough as "ludicrously flattering" to Thatcher).
Reception of the drama after broadcast, however, was generally positive, with particular note taken of tongue-in-cheek references to future events (Margaret promises that, were she in charge, "every child in the country would have as much milk as they wanted", as against her later reputation as "milk-snatcher Thatcher"; and the Thatcher children make remarks related to their future notoriety for a Dakar Rally incident and an attempted African coup involving Mark Thatcher and appearance on "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!" involving Carol Thatcher in a jungle respectively).
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7748279. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1949, 1959 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Long Walk to Finchley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.