Baroness Thatcher found adjustment to the shrunken vista of retirement a slow and agonising process.

Widowhood exacerbated the pain but, even before the death of her husband, Denis – whom she called her "rock" – she often seemed in turmoil about eviction from the job she still regarded as hers alone.

Yet, in office,this was the prime minister who had always lauded the domestic arts; the suburban Boadicea who had spoken excitedly, if incongruously, about her skill with drapes. It was a small, silly deceit which set many women's teeth on edge but one which she believed expressed her common touch. Six months after being booted out of No 10, she reflected bleakly: "Home is where you come to when you have nothing better to do." There, in one rueful sentence, the real Margaret Thatcher was exposed.

By nature and ambition she was a warrior and workaholic, and whatever joyful companionship she shared with Denis did not tame the obsessive need for full control. Throughout her career, Mrs Thatcher resolutely demonstrated quite masculine aggression, a character trait that doesn't drain away with an official sacking. It seeks new goals and, if unable to find them, it meddles. John Major and William Hague bore the brunt of the Iron Lady's meddling, not just to their personal cost but to the cost of their party.

Britain's first woman prime minister was no feminist. Her Downing Street tenure didn't raise opportunities for women one jot. In contrast to the lot of women in the wider world, Mrs Thatcher made maximum use of her own right to work beyond the home. But the effect of her policies in cutting back on nursery care, home-help facilities and mature student places indicated an ironic opposition to other women having that same opportunity. No feminist, then, but there was about her a certain, old-fashioned brand of femininity. The Blessed Margaret was her own special trinity: Iron Lady, Nanny and Queen Bee in one.

Perhaps she was the most influential woman of her century but, beyond the pearls-and-bows contingent of the party faithful, her popularity among women was notably cool. Yet she was a populist virtuoso. In 1983 she visited The Herald on the occasion of its bicentenary and staff were privy to several telling vignettes. In his book, The Hollow Drum, Arnold Kemp, then editor, recalled that night when the machine room's union officials made it clear the prime minister would not be welcome in the press hall. Management was willing to disregard this warning but Downing Street indicated it didn't wish to be the cause of an embarrassing confrontation.

So, the press hall was omitted from the itinerary. Resplendent in evening dress and her no-surrender hairdo, Mrs Thatcher arrived after a dinner with the city's Chamber of Commerce, also celebrating its bicentenary. On the editorial floor she stayed for some time at the newsdesk, kicking off her shoes and chatting to reporters and sub-editors. In the boardroom she made a point of greeting the waitresses while studiously avoiding engagement with female executives, preferring to make eye contact and non-stop small talk with male colleagues and board directors.

As Mr Kemp observed, her visit was more regal than that of the Queen several weeks later. "In the composing room she knocked them cold," he wrote. "Those old trade unionists leapt about in great excitement as she posed for their photographs - The next day the machine room put in an official complaint: why had she not visited them?"

Changeless, ageless, tireless - these words were frequently applied to the woman whom former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, defined as "the best man in Europe". In France, then-president Mitterrand noted acidly she had "the eyes of Caligula but the mouth of Marilyn Monroe". The Queen, however, is said have found Mrs Thatcher cold and uncaring.

Other attacks, though brutal, were futile. In an outburst of sexism during the 1979 general election campaign, Dennis Canavan urged voters: "Don't let that witch hang up her curtains in Downing Street." Her response to such insults was withering, lady-like scorn and foreign leaders as disparate as Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan adopted a different tactic, openly showing how smitten they were by her combination of purring niceties and hectoring rhetoric. That old roué, the late Alan Clark confessed to lusting after the silky sound of the prime ministerial stockings as Mrs Thatcher crossed her legs when sitting on Westminster's sofas of high office, or when bending to study maps on the floor during the Falklands conflict.

Could anything compensate for the loss of office? Despite her international standing, she had made too many enemies abroad to become a roving ambassador, although the US acted initially as a second home. Americans appreciated her work ethic and friendship with the Reagans but, latterly, the US proved a difficult destination partly because of her son, Mark's, disgrace in Africa, which banned him from entering the country.

There was, of course, the House of Lords, where her appearances possessed such theatrical aplomb it was if that night of the long knives in 1990 had never happened. As ever, the tailoring and jewellery were flawless and the mannered diction fluted to the rafters with its old adversarial relish. But in this gathering the Baroness's nanny evangelism had met its match for, as she raged, their lordships invariably snoozed. Failing health curtailed her public life. Would she have approved of Thatcher, the movie? She probably would have been flattered and spooked by Meryl Streep's attention to detail yet one suspects she might have agreed with Alistair Darling's view of the film: performance brilliant; politics shallow. An abiding vision from the latter years is of a deeply bereft woman still locked in yesterday's feuds.