Baroness Margaret Thatcher

Official page describing the career of all Past Prime Ministers.

Born in 1925
Married in 1951 at the age of 26
Member of Parliament since 1959 (at the age of 34 years) - upto 1992 representing the Conservative party.
Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990
1975-90 - Leader of opposition and leader of the Conservative Party - a continuous period of 15 years
Shadow secretary of state for environment 1974 - 75
Secretary of state - Education and Science 1970-74
Shadow Secretary of state - Education and Science 1967-70
Parliamentary Secretary to the minister of pensions - 1961-64 - first important post after becoming MP in 1959
Retired from Parliament - House of commons in 1992 at the age of 66
Her husband Denis Thatcher died in 2003.
Died on 8th April 2013.  87 years of lifespan.
Active political life.
Wrote two memoirs - The Downing Street years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995)
After retirement one of her biographers described her as workless workaholic.
Thatcherism - Neo-liberal economics - abolition of welfare schemes and New Public Management.

Her successor John Major continued most of her policies.

What John Harris has to say about her:-

"There was a void opening up," he says. "I saw her from time to time, and I thought she bore up astonishingly well. But bearing in mind that she'd no interests outside politics, and that she had devoted 20 of every 24 hours to government, there was utter emptiness. When you'd spent all that time not just strategising, but mastering detail in a way that was quite frightening when she was in her pomp, every waking moment was filled. Now, it was all pure pleasantry and commiseration. And there was nothing to do as a result of that."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/feb/03/past.conservatives?INTCMP=SRCH

Thatcher saw out two last years as the MP for Finchley (somewhat incredibly, between 1990 and 1992, she and her Tory predecessor Edward Heath were both backbenchers), before entering the Lords. From a compact Westminster office on Great College Street - described in Alan Clark's diaries as a place with "a distinct aura of Elba" - she launched a US-oriented lecture career that reportedly brought in $50,000 for a half-hour speech, and created the Thatcher Foundation, which spread the free-market gospel via publications and academic endowments. (Funds eventually dried up and its British operation closed in May 2005, though its more successful American wing recently launched The Margaret Thatcher Centre For Freedom, a subsidiary of the rabidly rightwing Heritage Foundation, "dedicated to advancing the vision and ideals of Lady Thatcher" and focused on "how the United States and Britain can lead and change the world".)

"But for the more forceful kind of prime minister - Churchill, Heath, Thatcher, Blair - the loss of that office is like losing a limb."