“She changed us all. We went from being a people who saw ourselves as eternally on the downward slide to a nation that was proud to be British again.
The UK’s first woman prime minister transformed a sclerotic British economy, all but neutered the trade unions, and endeavored to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’ … The flip side of her courage, toughness and radicalism was an arrogance, obstinacy and remoteness that became more marked the longer she clung to office … Yet such was the force of her presence that what came after her was defined in terms of her absence.
Born in 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Margaret Hilda Roberts was the younger daughter of a corner-shop grocer, Alfred Roberts, and his wife Beatrice. He was a self-made man, a Liberal alderman and a father whose tenets of integrity, hard work and self-reliance were strong influences throughout her career. His younger daughter’s self-belief manifested itself early. Told by a teacher how lucky she was to have won a poetry-reading contest, the 10-year-old Margaret replied: “I was not lucky. I deserved it.”
~ Financial Times on Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 – April 8, 2013) who died yesterday. RIP.
Source: Quote from Financial Times: Margaret Thatcher: ‘Iron Lady’ Who Remade Britain. Image from Taylormarsh.com