BBC Four has commissioned a “light-hearted and imaginative” film detailing Margaret Thatcher’s early political career.

Written by Tony Saint’ Margaret Thatcher � The Long Walk to Finchley’

focuses on her determination to get selected to a ‘winnable’ Tory seat

and imagines what might have gone on behind the scenes during her

ten�year struggle as she was rejected by a succession Tory selection

committees finally being selected for Finchley and Friern Barnet, the

seat that she would become identified with for the rest of her

political career.

Andrea Riseborough who previously appeared in BBC Two’s Party Animals

stars as Margaret Thatcher with Rory Kinnear (Mansfield Park) as

husband Denis and Samuel West (Cambridge Spies) as fellow future PM Ted

Heath.

The film is produced by Great Meadow Productions and is the company’s

first wholly independent commission from the BBC. Their other recent

credits include the award-winning Bradford Riots for Channel 4 and the

critically acclaimed Messiah for the BBC.

Executive Producers Robert Cooper and Kate Triggs add: “Whatever your

views about Margaret Thatcher, she changed the country we live in

irrevocably. And yet she remains something of an enigma.”

“Although she is, arguably, the best known living Briton, we hardly

know her as a person at all. Tony Saint’s witty, humorous and

imaginative script portrays her as a living, breathing young woman up

against that most conservative of all institutions � the British Tory

Party.”

Filming begins in London in August.