Margaret Thatcher wields influence in London, Washington and here. Andy McSmith reports.
Sometimes it seems that Margaret Thatcher never went away. This year, Britain marks the 20th anniversary of her fall from power, an event that had some people weeping in distress and others cheering in the streets.
Yet, while other ex-world leaders slip quietly out of the collective memory, her reputation
refuses to fade.
Young people who were not born when she left office know who she was, have a strong idea of what she stood for, and hold pronounced views on whether she was good or bad for Britain.
Each of her successors has paid homage to her. It greatly distressed John Major that she never rated him as a successor. Tony Blair invited her to revisit Downing Street in 1998. She was invited back by Gordon Brown only two months into his premiership.
Two weeks ago, she was back there yet again. Looking frail now, dressed in a powder blue coat, the 84-year-old Baroness waved to the cameras from the doorstep of No 10 before being gently helped inside by a successor who is young enough to be her grandson.
In New Zealand, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson had a framed portrait of Thatcher hanging on his Parliamentary office wall, until he was strongly advised by staff to remove it.
Even Sarah Palin wants a share of that Thatcher glory.
Alaska's favourite hockey mum has arranged a visit to the UK, and announced on her Facebook page last week that she would love to meet "the Iron Lady", who is "one of my political heroines".
Thatcher's long shadow hung over the drastic budget introduced by fresh-faced British Chancellor George Osborne last week.
After the experience of the 1930s, it was accepted orthodoxy that governments did not cut public spending in a recession, but use borrowed money to stimulate growth.
Thirty years ago Thatcher was the first post-war leader to do the opposite.
That worked for her then, as it kept her in power for more than a decade, though at the cost of driving unemployment above three million and devastating the economic base of large parts of the country. David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg now hope it will work for them.
But there is no prospect of the lady herself making a comeback. She is now too "fragile", as those who know her tactfully put it.
In March 2002, after she had suffered a series of strokes, her doctors warned her not to risk any more speeches or public appearances that might put her under strain and induce another stroke.
In June 2003, she took a heavy emotional knock when her husband Denis died.
Though she puts in an occasional appearance in the House of Lords, she has not spoken in the chamber since July 6, 1999. Her last speech there was not her finest.
It was a eulogy to that blood-soaked dictator Augusto Pinochet of Chile, who, according to Baroness Thatcher, was "being victimised because the organised international Left are bent on revenge".
It was indicative of Thatcher's thought processes that she saw a military dictator who overthrew an elected president as a "long-standing friend of Britain" while all the time Nelson Mandela was in prison he was, in her eyes, the head of a terrorist organisation.
But the forthright way she gave voice to her right-wing opinions are a large part of her lasting fascination.
We are so accustomed to being smothered with bland sentiments by politicians that we have almost forgotten what it was like to have a leader who told it like she saw it.
Thatcher did not pretend to place any value on equality. She set out her stall in a speech in the United States just a few months after being elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.
"The pursuit of equality itself is a mirage," she said. "Opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal and the freedom to be different. One of the reasons we value individuals is not because they are all the same but because they are all different. Let our children grow tall and some taller than others, if they have the ability in them to do so."
You do not need to agree with a word of this to be impressed by the clarity and certainty of the argument she presented. She was a woman with courage in her convictions.
One of the pleasures of researching the Thatcher years is tracing back to the original source the sayings that are attributed to her.
Too often, politicians turn out - disappointingly - not to have said what they are alleged to have said, and what you rather wish they had said. But Margaret Thatcher really did say "there is no such thing as society", in an interview with a women's magazine.
Just before the Falklands conflict turned bloody, she stood on the steps of Downing Street and ordered the journalists there to "rejoice".
And on her birth of her first grandchild, she truly did step forth to announce "we are a grandmother". These days, no one reaches the front rank of politics until they have been carefully coached not to say anything so memorable.
The other, obvious element that makes up the Thatcher legend is that this was a woman who fought her way to the top in a world controlled by men.
When she was elected leader of the Conservative Party, there were just 27 women MPs out of 623. On the Conservative side, there were seven women and 270 men.
To quote Sarah Palin's Facebook entry: "Baroness Thatcher's life and career serve as a blueprint for overcoming the odds and challenging the 'status quo'.
"She started life as a grocer's daughter from Grantham and rose to become prime minister - all by her own merit and hard work. I cherish her example and will always count her as one of my role models."
She liked to be complimented on her femininity and there were men who found her devastatingly sexy. The novelist Kingsley Amis thought her "one of the most beautiful women I have ever met", and had recurring dreams about her.
- INDEPENDENT
