The Forging of The Iron Lady

Still puzzled by the sudden reappearance of a woman who seems familiar, with a signature look: helmet of yellow hair, severe skirt-suit in a hard, bright shade of blue, and some sort of creamy silky blouse with a pussycat bow, who looks awfully like Mrs T but somehow, isn't?

Well, you are right to give a double-take. Our city centres are plastered with posters of Meryl Streep as Mrs Thatcher in a new biopic, and Meryl's got Maggie's steely glare, blonde busby and pursed lips, and almost her voice – I loved the line, 'I may be persuaded to surrender the hat. The pearls however, are ABSOLUTELY non-negotiable' – down to a (Mrs) tee.

'It took a lot out of me, but it was a privilege to play her, it really was,' said Streep.

So chapeau for an inspired piece of casting to director Phyllida Lloyd (her last smash hit was Mamma Mia! set in a sun-soaked Greek island) who has turned for her next trick to the blood-spattered corridors and coffeestained carpets of power, ie, the history of Tory politics, 1970-1990. It is said that Lady Thatcher will not see the film of her life, and her friend Sir Tim Bell called it exploitative before he even saw it; there have also been objections that the unscrupulous treatment serves up Thatcher minus Thatcherism. Whatever your view, the biopic will bring one of the most extraordinary women this country has ever seen to a wider, younger audience.

Now, The Lady always shirks from giving an Open University lecture in place of entertaining copy, but this movie's release presents us with an opportunity to revisit one of the most amazing political stories ever told: how a humble grocer's daughter from Grantham, Lincolnshire, became the first and only female Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So let us start with a baby girl called Margaret Hilda Roberts who was born on 13 October 1925, the younger of two daughters of Alderman Alfred Roberts – who had two grocery shops – and his wife Beatrice. Margaret was a born prefect, destined to be head girl. She won scholarships and captained teams and sang in choirs and got into Oxford. The influence of the patriarch, however, was so profound that it now seems almost odd to us today that when she met and married the love of her life, a divorced businessman called Denis Thatcher in 1951, she embraced the traditional role of wife and mother so wholeheartedly that, from that day forth, she was known by two words for the next 40 years: Mrs Thatcher. If you think that the wife of the deputy PM, Mrs Nick Clegg, goes by the name of Miriam González Durántez, and Tony Blair's consort kept her maiden name, Cherie Booth, in court, you will see both how radical and yet traditional Mrs Thatcher was always going to be.

Margaret and Dennis Thatcher on their wedding day

And so it proved. So while she made supper for Denis every night (even if it was only an M&S ready-meal), she was also violently ambitious, and qualified for the bar in the same year as she produced twins, Mark and Carol, and soon after, at the third time of trying, she was selected in 1958 to fight Finchley for the Conservatives. She became Margaret Thatcher MP in 1959. She rose through the ranks and joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1970, at which point the Tories were returned to power and her political career took off like a jump jet. She was Education Secretary and one of her first moves was to cut free milk for children, and immediately earned herself a new name, Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher. She loved the country, and she wanted to make it a better place, and it was down to her to do it (one of her most famous quotes is, 'In politics, if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman').

Her son Mark – she could never pretend he wasn't her favourite, and one of the only two instances of her crying in public was when he was lost in the Sahara Desert during a rally – gives us an insight into life chez Thatcher. Her motto was 'never a wasted moment', and she'd rush home, he says, to their home in Chelsea to 'cook supper with her coat on' He'd gently tell her to take it off. 'Her inspiration was growing up in the wars, where you had to rely on yourself, help others, and not depend on the state,' says Sir Mark. 'Government should be the servant not the master of the electorate.'

In 1979, Mrs Thatcher MP became Rt Hon Mrs Thatcher PM, the country's first female prime minister and the first female leader in the Western World. This was, and remains, the most astonishing fact about her, even more astonishing than her ability to run a household and the country on four hours' sleep, and the reason why we care now, movies are being made, and people will still be interested in her 100 years from now.

As Charles Moore told me, 'I always return to the basic point. She was the first and only woman. It did give her a different way of seeing politics, and because she was by her own sex and background an outsider, she did see things from the viewpoint of the people rather than that of the elites. And she has a personal authenticity. You may not agree with what she says, but she says it because she has thought about it, and thinks it is important, rather than because she is a politician and politicians are supposed to pour out words.'

With twins Mark and Carol

Her authenticity did not win her universal admiration. She did not fall over herself to promote women; she was more interested in serving the country rather than any pressure group or single-issue causes, whether it was the trades unions, the miners, or feminism. She only ever had one female in her Cabinet (Edwina Currie), and she didn't last long. She even made a joke of her being a woman in charge of a man's world when she said, 'Every PM needs a Willie,' (a reference to Willie Whitelaw, who was in her Cabinet).

And she loved men, and flirted shamelessly with them. President Mitterrand was smitten, saying that she had the 'eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe'. But the rest of the country was not invariably charmed, and during her turbulent reign (and it was a reign) she subdued some (the miners, the Argentine fascist Junta, the money supply, Iranian terrorists, excessive public spending) and submitted to others (the poll-tax rioters, her son Mark, her husband Denis, the backstabbing pro-European Tory 'wets' who brought her down). As a result, the names accumulated: from merely 'she' to 'battling Maggie' or just 'that bloody woman', often abbreviated to 'TBW'.

She was called many names as PM, including one that stuck, the Iron Lady, but each one was, in its way, a compliment. She was the ultimate juggler, but also the original conviction politician, as Meryl Streep observed: 'I still don't agree with a lot of her policies. But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn't a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times.' She could deal with the slings and arrows because she believed in what she was doing – and she had Denis. 'Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone,' she wrote in her memoirs. 'What a man. What a husband. What a friend.'

Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

Another friend and fanatically tigerish 'Thatcherite' is Lord Tebbit. He told me that Mrs T (another of her more affectionate nicknames) dealt with the two great problems the country faced in the 1980s: the economy, and the unions. 'At the end of her Governments we had budget surpluses,' he told me. 'She and Reagan had ended the Cold War, and she'd liberated the Falklands.' Not a bad record, I said. 'There was more to be done, but unfortunately she was not allowed to do it,' Lord Tebbit reminded me. For the first and only woman PM was forced out of office, despite being unbeaten in election, and it was not until she resigned, curiously, that Mrs Thatcher became Lady Thatcher.

For when she resigned, she requested of the Queen that Denis, not she, should be given an honour: and so Denis received a baronetcy that could be passed down to Mark, which it did on his death in 2003, and three years later she entered the Lords with her final title, Baroness Thatcher, that she holds to this day.

But she'll also always be Mrs Thatcher, and had she not existed, we'd never have the Spice Girls, girl power, privatisation, or the pussycat bow. But let us give the last word to Mummy's boy Mark: 'My perspective as her son is very straightforward,' he says. 'She was the best man for the job.'

The Verdict: Tory Women on the Tory Woman

Edwina Currie, former Tory MP The Iron Lady a feminist icon? Now there's a question she would have harrumphed over, and pointed out icily that she had been a chemist, and a qualified tax lawyer, as well as a wife and mother, before she became one of the nation's few women MPs in 1959. If that alone did not make her a role model for other women, then being the nation's first (and so far only) woman prime minister must do the trick. Yet Margaret Thatcher was definitely not a feminist. She'd have said that she did not campaign for more women to enter Parliament, she simply got on with it. In her early years she admitted that prejudice against women did hold us back. But later, her view was that women should stop blaming other people, or men, or the system, and simply strive to be good enough to make the grade. And this was where many ambitious women would part company with her. For in the 11 years she was in Number 10, Mrs T never promoted any female Cabinet Ministers. And she never appointed any women to the Tory Whips' Office. Those failures seem bizarre, but she ceased to be a feminist icon for many of us. These days she's seen differently. Her success goaded Labour into pushing more women into the Commons, and the Cabinet, though we've still never had a woman Chancellor. She's hailed as Boadicea, Elizabeth I and Nell Gwynn rolled into one.'

Lady (Anne) Jenkin 'Lady Thatcher's story is inspirational. The Iron Lady film is revising people's opinions about her, and women commentators are re-assessing their views, appreciating now what an incredible feminist icon she is. I was very struck when I attended the Women of the Year lunch with her a few years ago, by the numbers of women from all backgrounds who came up to her with comments like "I wouldn't be on the Board of Shell without you as my inspiration". Girls in schools still say to me "If Margaret Thatcher could do it, then so can I". But there are still too many girls whose ambition is to be on Celebrity Big Brother or TOWIE. Come on girls – raise your game.'

Amber Rudd, MP for Hastings 'It's easy to forget what an extraordinary achievement it was for a woman to become an MP and then the PM. Not just any PM but the one rated the top for the 20th century in the recent poll. She was one of 25 women MPs when she got elected in 1959. Twenty years later she became PM and there were only 19 women MPs! That shows the resistance to women in politics. The equivalent might be a man entering a convent and becoming the Mother Superior. Nobody saw her coming and she just showed with grit and determination that she was the one to lead the country. Fantastic!'