Margaret Thatcher

**Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher**  (13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British stateswoman. She served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 until her resignation in 1990, longer than any other British prime minister in the 20th century. She led the  Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. Thatcher was the first female British prime minister and was often known by the nickname "The Iron Lady", given to her by a journalist from the Soviet Union. Her birth name was Margaret Hilda Roberts.

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 made her a Secretary of State in his government of 1970 to 1974. In 1975, she beat Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and the first woman to lead a major British political party. In 1979, she was elected Prime Minister, and won a landslide re-election in 1983 after victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a revival of support.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was very unpopular, and her more Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after a challenge was made by Michael Heseltine to her leadership. After retiring from the House of Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as **Baroness Thatcher**, which gave her the right to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke in London, at the age of 87.

Thatcher is a controversial figure in British political culture, but is still viewed positively in most opinion polls of British prime ministers. The debate over her neoliberal policies and legacy continues in the UK into the 21st century.

## Early life 
Margaret Roberts was born in North Parade, Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, a tobacconist originally from Northamptonshire. Her mother was Beatrice Ethel Stephenson, from Lincolnshire.

She studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. In her final year, she studied X-ray crystallography under Dorothy Hodgkin, who later won the Nobel Prize. She was already interested in politics, and became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She read political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's *The Road to Serfdom* (1944), which said  economic intervention by government was wrong, because it gave too much power to the state. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington memorial service to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. She would also visit several times for ceremonies that honoured Reagan.

## Death
Thatcher died from a stroke on 8 April 2013 at her hotel room in London, aged 87. She had bladder cancer and dementia at the time of her death. In line with her wishes she received a ceremonial funeral, with full military honours, and a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip attended the funeral, only the second time in the Queen's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister.

## References
## Other websites
* 
* Margaret Thatcher Foundation
* Her obituary (a life story) on the BBC News website
* Margaret Thatcher in Citizendium