page_title: Margaret Thatcher
section_title: Family and childhood
hierarchical_section_title: Margaret Thatcher / Early life and education / Family and childhood
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Margaret Roberts, age 13
context_page_description: Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC was a British stateswoman who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold that office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies known as Thatcherism.
  Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her secretary of state for education and science in his 1970–74 government. In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her parents were Alfred Roberts (1892–1970), from Northamptonshire, and Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson, 1888–1960), from Lincolnshire. Her father's maternal grandmother, Catherine Sullivan, was born in County Kerry, Ireland.
  Thatcher spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned a tobacconist's and a grocery shop. In 1938, prior to the Second World War, the Roberts family briefly gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. Margaret, with her pen-friending elder sister Muriel, saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey.
  Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist, attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church, but Margaret was more skeptical; the future scientist told a friend that she could not believe in angels, having calculated that they needed a breastbone six feet long to support wings. Alfred came from a Liberal family but stood (as was then customary in local government) as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.
  Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43. Other students thought of Roberts as the "star scientist", although mistaken advice regarding cleaning ink from parquetry almost caused chlorine gas poisoning. In her upper sixth year Roberts was accepted for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, a women's college, starting in 1944. After another candidate withdrew, Roberts entered Oxford in October 1943.
caption: Aged 12–13 in 1938
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