In foreign affairs, her years in power included a military victory to retake the Falkland Islands, a genuinely special relationship with US president Ronald Reagan, detente with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet Union imploded and an increasingly sceptical approach to membership of what became the European Union.
On 5 February 1979, Thatcher scored a surprise victory over the incumbent Ted Heath in the first round of the Conservative leadership election, winning the votes of 130 MPs to Heath's 119.
Four years later she beat Labour's Jim Callaghan in the general election to become Britain's first woman prime minister.
At my children's primary school in the 1980s and '90s there was a playground rhyme about "Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher", a reference to the cancellation of free milk for school children during her time as Heath's education secretary.
This week it held its inaugural meeting marking an equally important Thatcher anniversary: 50 years since she became the leader of the Conservative Party.
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