Rethinking the Iron Lady

Many have written about Margaret Thatcher, but only one biographer had access to her private letters. Tina Gaudoin discusses the former PM's style and suspected mild autism

- Tina Gaudoin

Margaret Thatcher has never been a neutral subject.

Even now, three decades after she left Downing Street, her name alone can turn a polite dinner into a barroom brawl. Whisper it in Yorkshire and you'll likely receive a plethora of expletives. Drop it into conversation in Chelsea and you may still be asked to rise for a toast. She is a politician who has become a myth, and a caricature, but also, conversely, for many, an icon. And yet, for all the noise, there's a startling lack of curiosity about Margaret Thatcher. I'm not talking about her as "The Iron Lady" - a tower of toughness, stripped of nuance and femininity - there's plenty of that. No. I'm talking about her as a woman first and a politician second.

Her rise was improbable, to say the least. For a start, she was in politics despite being born neither posh nor male. When she came of age, the game was predominantly played by upper-middle-class men, with rules designed to exclude all others. Her lower-middle-class status as a grocer's daughter and her gender aggressively and determinedly worked against her. Before her, there was almost no example of female leadership at the top of British politics, or indeed international affairs. BMT (before Margaret Thatcher), only three women had led countries anywhere in the world. And two of those came from dynasties - Indira Gandhi of India and Sirimavo Bandaranaike of what was then Ceylon.