Mrs Thatcher towered above them all... 100%

NEXT Monday marks a momentous occasion: the 100th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's birth.

- VIRGINIA BLACKBURN

Say what you like about her (and many have) but she was a momentous politician, towering above the rest like a mountain above a field, and she has not, to this day, been matched. The current Conservative leader might feel, with justification, that she is subject to both sexism and racism, but her battles to get there were as nothing to what the Iron Lady had to do.

I was in my teens when Mrs T became the Tory Party leader and I remember, on the eve of the 1979 election, having a talk with my mother and we agreed that because of Maggie's slightly hectoring personality, the Tories would lose. It would be very sad for her.