Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a grocer who also served as a local alderman. She studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, worked as a research chemist — including a short spell on ice-cream emulsifiers — then qualified as a barrister. She entered the House of Commons in 1959 for Finchley, served as education secretary under Edward Heath, and in 1975 defeated him for the Conservative leadership, the first woman to lead a major British party.

She became prime minister after the 1979 election and held the office until 1990, the longest continuous tenure of the twentieth century in Britain. Her governments sold state industries, restricted trade-union power, fought inflation with tight money, and in 1982 sent a task force to retake the Falkland Islands after Argentina’s invasion. She survived the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing. She resigned after a party challenge in 1990, sat in the Lords as Baroness Thatcher, and died in London on 8 April 2013. The site’s 1925 Chinese New Year is 24 January, so 13 October is Ox/Libra.

No public-domain still of her face is on file, so this page uses the Year of the Ox emblem rather than a copyrighted photograph.