In the popular imagination, the first woman Prime Minister dominates the story of the 1980s. Whatever divides her admirers from her critics, both agree that she was uniquely transformative. With one wave of her magic nation-saving wand, a new shopping centre materializes in Peterborough. At one touch of her special working-class-destroying button, a factory explodes in South Wales. She destroys Britain; she saves it. But were the changes that swept over Britain during the 1980s really attributable to just one woman? Was she really as transformative as both her enthusiasts and her detractors claim?

Dominic Sandbrook, Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982 (2019)