Bold, unwavering and unyielding. Confident, courageous and ambitious. She is the first female prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Great Britain, writes 10te.bg.
She is a holder of the Order of the Garter, the Order of Merit, the Order of St. John. Member of the Monarch's Privy Council and an honorary member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
She is Margaret Thatcher, and you will find out the interesting things about her life if you continue reading.
1. Birth
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, East Anglia. She was the second daughter of Alfred and Beatrice Roberts. Her father was a grocer and her mother a seamstress. Alfred owned two grocers and was a Methodist. He was involved in local politics and served as a member of the town council. He was also a lay preacher and, for a short time, was even mayor of Grantham.
2. Lifestyle
Despite being a successful grocer with two shops, Alfred was extremely frugal. He chose to live with his family above one of his shops, on the third floor of a brick building, in a small flat without an internal toilet or hot water. His favorite phrases are that one should never waste a minute and that one should not spend money unnecessarily. Margaret and her sister - Muriel - work for their father in their free time, and their parents never take a vacation together, so that the shops are always open.
3. Ice cream
In 1947, Thatcher received a bachelor's degree and began scientific work as a chemist in Colchester. She helped develop a method for preserving ice cream and was part of the team that went down in history with the creation of the first frozen ice cream.
4. Family
Margaret married a businessman 10 years her senior with one divorce, a retired major, a lover of the cup and with the fame of a slacker - Dennis Thatcher. Her father did not approve of his daughter's choice, and her mother and sister did not seem to be happy with Denis's choice. Nevertheless, the two married in 1951. In August 1953, their twins Mark and Carol were born. Denis Thatcher died on June 26, 2003. At his funeral, people saw Margaret's tears for the first time.
5. The nickname
Margaret Thatcher was often mocked and called by all sorts of nicknames. Among them were: “The Great Elephant”, “Attila the Hen”, “The Grocer's Daughter”, “The Milk Thief” or simply “Maggie”. But the nickname she is best known for in history is the “Iron Lady”. She received it in 1976 after her critical speech about the policies of the Soviet Union. Then the newspaper of the USSR Ministry of Defense “Red Star” called her that and through radio “Moscow” this nickname became known to the whole world.
6. Diet
In Margaret Thatcher’s archive is preserved a typewritten printout of a special diet with the warning that it should not last more than two weeks. 14 days before the 1979 general election, Thatcher decided she needed to look better and lost almost 10 kilograms. The Conservative Party leader's "election diet" is based on eggs and grapefruit. Every day she has breakfast with a few eggs and grapefruit plus black coffee or tea. Lunch also includes grapefruit, which can be replaced with spinach or tomato, and two eggs. Dinner is often skipped, but when it is, it consists of steak, cottage cheese and vegetables.
7. The bombing
8. The Bag
The bag is Mrs. Thatcher's favorite women's accessory. And a specific and very special black - a rectangular patent leather bag by “Asprey”. She did not part with this accessory for several years and it became an invariable part of her image. She found her bag to be “the only safe place in “Downing Street” 10”, and her cabinet ministers treated her with as much awe as they did the Iron Lady.
9. Hairstyle
One of the most recognizable and unchanged things in the Iron Lady's look remains her iconic hairstyle. Her short hairstyle with light curls that create volume is included in the five most iconic hairstyles of the last fifty years. Thatcher was always concerned about two things, no matter where she was in the world - one was that her suit was always perfectly ironed, and the second was that her hair looked impeccable. In London, specially appointed people took care of both of these things. Before her trips, she always contacted employees of the British embassies in the respective country in advance, asking them to find the best local hairdresser. His task was to achieve the necessary volume in her hairstyle with the thermal rollers that Thatcher carried with her.
10. Death