The death of Baroness Thatcher has unleashed predictable controversy concerning the record of this politician in shaping Britain’s destiny within the closing decades of the 20 th century. And, just as predictably, much of the general public debate has surrounded her influence over domestic policy; the elemental contention that she was a formidable and successful foreign-policy manager, who ‘helped bring on the top of the Cold War’, has seldom been challenged. Nonetheless it need to have for, although the towering personality of Lady Thatcher can’t be doubted, the actuality remains that she practised quite a traditionalist foreign policy characterised by both humdrum ideas which occur to was at the right side of history, and often spectacular misjudgements of historic events.

It is now largely forgotten that Margaret Thatcher came to power with a complete loss of foreign-policy experience. This major handicap was amplified by the truth that the largely misogynist media and community of strategic commentators of the day took it without any consideration that a girl politician would always should work much harder than a guy to achieve success on foreign and security issues. Consequently, her only foray into such matters in the course of the general election of 1979 was the bald assertion that détente, which was then flourishing between the Soviet Union and the West, can have gone too far, giving the Warsaw Pact too many advantages. This criticism was the conventional fare of right-wing commentators on the time, and even though it elicited a couple of headlines within the press, it offered no glimpse of her government’s foreign-policy priorities. This was exactly what the Conservative Party Central Office desired: an electoral campaign confined to domestic matters.