LONDON —
Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of British politics, who pulled her country back from 35 years of socialism, led it to victory in the Falklands war and helped guide the United States and the Soviet Union through the cold war’s difficult last years, died Monday.
She was 87.
“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother, Baroness Thatcher, died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” a statement from her spokesman, Lord Tim Bell, said.
She had been in poor health for months, and suffered from dementia.
Thatcher was the first woman to become prime minister of Britain and the first to lead a major Western power in modern times.
Hard-driving and hardheaded, she led her Conservative Party to three straight election victories and held office for 11 ½ years — May 1979 to November 1990 — longer than any other British politician in the 20th century.
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