Adored and despised - Margaret Thatcher's legacy to live on

It was difficult, if not impossible, to take a neutral view of a person who held such strong personal convictions, and who always knew best.

My first recollection of her goes back to the early seventies when I was a district reporter in North Shropshire, and the then Education Secretary was visiting a village primary school on my patch.

She had been dubbed "Margaret Thatcher – Milk Snatcher" at the time following a decision to end automatic free drinks to pupils.

All that I recall was of a bustling, businesslike politician with a shrill voice, and it certainly didn't occur to me at the time that here was one of the most remarkable politicians of the 20th century.

Only a couple of years later, and Mrs Thatcher had won the Conservative leadership by the staggering margin of 146 votes to 79 over the man who was later to become her deputy, William Whitelaw, having already brushed aside the former premier, Edward Heath.

"Every woman needs a Willie," she said of her loyal right hand man in one of those comments you always felt were not so innocent as she would have had us believe.

Loyalty was a key issue for Britain's first woman prime minister.

"Is he/she one of us?" was usually the first question she asked about an up-and-coming politician or adviser.

She commanded – and returned – loyalty from all those close to her, whether it be Bernard Ingham – her voice to the media – or the staff at 10 Downing Street, whose welfare was always a priority.

The famous occasion when a waitress spilled a drink on a VIP guest at a Downing Street reception, only for the Prime Minister to pay most attention to the distraught offender rather than the victim, was not untypical.

Her staff and closest aides would have died for her. Two of her greatest allies and supporters – Airey Neave and Ian Gow – did die at the hands of Irish republican terrorists.

Everyone close to her was aware of her physical strength and stamina in her prime, diminished by the ageing process in recent years. Five hours sleep a night and the odd glass of Scotch was all she needed.

But it was after the most outrageous act of Irish terrorism of the troubles – the attempt to assassinate Mrs Thatcher and the rest of the Cabinet in the 1984 Brighton bombing – that the mental strength of the Prime Minister shone through.

I remember standing in the Brighton Conference Centre next door to the blackened Grand Hotel only hours after the bomb had gone off, watching as the Conservative leader stood, uncowed, to reopen proceedings at her party's annual conference – on time. It was the clearest of messages to the men of terror.

Amazing woman, we all thought.

And, although she once described herself as the only man in her cabinet, she had no qualms about using womanly instincts to get her way.

Having rejected the advice of her husband, Denis, a year earlier, no amount of feminine persuasion was going to stop her senior colleagues turning their backs on her in 1990 when they thought that defeat for the Tories was inevitable if she stayed at the helm until the next general election.

She left Downing Street with tears in her eyes and several knives in her back, having lost touch with many of her MPs and many of the people who voted for her in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Only the Tory faithful in the constituencies still loved her, as they continued to show at successive party conferences.

In the years that followed, she was usually there in the background, letting it be known that she wasn't best pleased by this policy or that. Outwardly she declared support for her successor, John Major. But the impression left was that inwardly she was thinking, Harry Enfield-like, 'You don't want to do it like that.'

She courted Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and they were only too happy to be pictured with her on the steps of 10 Downing Street.

In recent years, she has had to bear the loss of her husband, Dennis, and the break-up of her son, Mark's, marriage. Daughter Carole, I suspect, has been a brick.

She has also had to cope with failing health, but has not allowed that to stop her getting out to what she considers to be really important occasions – like the memorial service for one of her cabinet ministers, North Shropshire's John Biffen, infamously dubbed "semi-detached" by Bernard Ingham when he dared to disagree with the Thatcher strategy.

Occasionally in the Commons and in Labour and union circles around the land, the inbuilt contempt for Lady Thatcher spills out, often from the mouths of Labour women. For them, Britain's first woman premier was no role model.

The rest of the nation will be split between adoration, admiration and animosity.

One thing is for sure. She won't be forgotten, and for today's policitians, there is a constant reminder: a huge bronze statue in the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons – handbag and all.