I was three when Thatcher left Downing Street. I don't remember he as Prime Minister. As a boy in the 1990s I heard much about her, like some giant from history. (They always hissed it, Maggie Thatcher, leaving me in no doubt she was to be hated and scorned.) It took me some while to realise this giant from history was not from history at all, not like Henry VIII with his wives or Churchill with his Spitfires. She was still there.
Now she truly passes into history, in the way I had always imagined her. Hefty tomes and great works are waiting to be written, a vast space on the shelf for her already cleared. I am not the one to assess her in office, or what she means for us now. I never lived it, I am no witness. I was right the first time when I thought her a giant like Henry or Winston, for I never saw them die either. That she lived on, even after she was assassinated, made no difference. She couldn't possibly die, could she? Yes she could - old and frail, demented and ailing, yes she could. But not in this wise: just as she haunted us when I was a boy, so will she haunt us when I die.
