English politician Margaret Thatcher was BOTD in 1925. Born Margaret Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, she was the daughter of a greengrocer and alderman. She studied at Oxford University, where she joined the Conservative Party, and trained as a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament in 1959, and became Secretary of State for Education and Science, infamously abolishing free milk for school children which earned her the nickname “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher”. In 1975, she defeated Edward Heath to become Conservative Party leader, and led a landslide victory in the 1979 general election, becoming Britain’s first female Prime Minister. Adopting radical free-market economics, she dismantled the welfare state, privatised state-owned enterprises, decimated trade unions and deregulated the financial sector. Her popularity surged after a victory in the Falklands War, but was undermined by her refusal to give ground to moderates within her Party, earning her the nickname “The Iron Lady”. Her 11-year tenure was marked by considerable social unrest, including a scorched-earth campaign against the Irish Republican Army, a sustained battle with striking coal miners and mass unemployment. In 1988, she amended the Local Government Act to ban local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality or allow the teaching of homosexuality as a “pretended family relationship”. The law, nicknamed “Section 28” was widely criticised for undermining safe sex campaigns during the HIV/AIDS crisis and legitimising homophobia. She resigned as Prime Minister in 1990 after a leadership challenge, and was made Baroness Thatcher, sitting in the House of Lords. She married Dennis Thatcher in 1951, with whom she had two children, remaining together until his death in 2003. After suffering a stroke, she moved into a suite at the Ritz Hotel in London, dying there in 2013, aged 87. Despised by the left-wing and revered by conservatives, her legacy continues to be controversial. She has been portrayed frequently in film, television and plays, notably by Meryl Streep in the 2011 biopic The Iron Lady and by Gillian Anderson in The Crown.