title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger received "Best Actor of 2005" awards from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for his performance in "Brokeback Mountain", in which he plays Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del Mar, who has a love affair with aspiring rodeo rider Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He also received the nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor — Motion Picture Drama, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and an Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance, making him, at age 26, the eight-youngest nominee in the category. In "The New York Times" review of the film, critic Stephen Holden writes: "Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn." In a review in "Rolling Stone", Peter Travers states: "Ledger's magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost."


title: Heath Ledger

text: After "Brokeback Mountain", Ledger costarred with fellow Australian Abbie Cornish in the 2006 Australian film "Candy," an adaptation of the 1998 novel "," as young heroin addicts in love attempting to break free of their addiction, whose mentor is played by Geoffrey Rush; for his performance as sometime poet Dan, Ledger was nominated for three "Best Actor" awards, including one of the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards, which both Cornish and Rush won in their categories. Shortly after the release of "Candy", Ledger was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As one of six actors embodying different aspects of the life of Bob Dylan in the 2007 film "I'm Not There", directed by Todd Haynes, Ledger "won praise for his portrayal of 'Robbie [Clark],' a moody, counter-culture actor who represents the romanticist side of Dylan, but says accolades are never his motivation". Posthumously, on 23 February 2008, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the film's ensemble cast, its director, and its casting director.


title: Heath Ledger

text: In his penultimate film role, Ledger played the Joker in Christopher Nolan's 2008 film "The Dark Knight", which was released nearly six months after his death. While working on the film in London, Ledger told Sarah Lyall in their "New York Times" interview that he viewed "The Dark Knight"s Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy". For his performance in "The Dark Knight", Ledger posthumously won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (becoming the fourth-youngest winner of the award) which his family accepted on his behalf, as well as numerous other posthumous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, which Nolan accepted for him. At the time of his death on 22 January 2008, Ledger had completed about half of the work for his final film role as Tony in Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus". Gilliam chose to adapt the film after his death by having fellow actors (and friends of Ledger) Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell play "fantasy transformations" of his character so that Ledger's final performance could be seen in theatres.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger had aspirations to become a film director and had made some music videos with his production company The Masses, which director Todd Haynes praised highly in his tribute to Ledger upon accepting the ISP Robert Altman Award, which Ledger posthumously shared, on 23 February 2008. In 2006, Ledger directed music videos for the title track on Australian hip hop artist N'fa's CD debut solo album "Cause An Effect" and for the single "Seduction Is Evil (She's Hot)". Later that year, Ledger inaugurated a new record label, The Masses Music, with singer Ben Harper and also directed a music video for Harper's song "Morning Yearning".


title: Heath Ledger

text: At a news conference at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, Ledger spoke of his desire to make a documentary film about the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who died in 1974, at the age of 26, from an overdose of an antidepressant. Ledger created and acted in a music video set to Drake's recording of the singer's 1974 song about depression "Black Eyed Dog" – a title "inspired by Winston Churchill's descriptive term for depression" ("black dog"); it was shown publicly only twice, first at the Bumbershoot Festival, in Seattle, held from 1 to 3 September 2007; and secondly as part of "A Place To Be: A Celebration of Nick Drake", with its screening of "Their Place: Reflections On Nick Drake," "a series of short filmed homages to Nick Drake" (including Ledger's), sponsored by American Cinematheque, at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, in Hollywood, on 5 October 2007. After Ledger's death, his music video for "Black Eyed Dog" was shown on the Internet and excerpted in news clips distributed via YouTube.


title: Heath Ledger

text: He was working with Scottish screenwriter and producer Allan Scott on an adaptation of the 1983 novel "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis, which would have been his first feature film as a director. He also intended to act in the film, with Canadian actor Elliot Page proposed in the lead role. Ledger's final directorial work, in which he shot two music videos before his death, premiered in 2009. The music videos, completed for Modest Mouse and Grace Woodroofe, include an animated feature for Modest Mouse's song "King Rat", and the Woodroofe video for her cover of David Bowie's "Quicksand". The "King Rat" video premiered on 4 August 2009.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger was an avid chess player, and had participated in tournaments when he was young. As an adult, he often played with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park in Manhattan. Ledger was a fan of West Coast Eagles, an Australian rules football team that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL) and is based in his hometown of Perth.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger was an "obsessive" photographer, who loved taking stills, then drawing over them with paint, markers, or nail polish.


title: Heath Ledger

text: In 2004, he began a relationship with actress Michelle Williams after meeting on the set of "Brokeback Mountain". Their daughter, Matilda Rose, was born on 28 October 2005, in New York City. Matilda's godparents are "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Jake Gyllenhaal and Williams' "Dawson's Creek" co-star Busy Philipps. In January 2006, Ledger put his residence in Bronte, New South Wales up for sale and returned to the United States, where he shared a house with Williams in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn from 2005 to 2007. In September 2007, Williams' father confirmed to "The Daily Telegraph" that Ledger and Williams had broken up.


title: Heath Ledger

text: After his breakup with Williams, the tabloid press and other public media linked Ledger romantically with supermodels Helena Christensen and Gemma Ward. In 2011, Ward stated the pair had begun dating in November 2007 and that their families had spent that year's Christmas together in their hometown of Perth.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger's relationship with the Australian press was sometimes turbulent, and it led to his abandonment of plans for his family to reside part-time in Sydney. In 2004, he strongly denied press reports alleging that "he spat at journalists on the Sydney set of the film "Candy"", or that one of his relatives had done so later, outside Ledger's Sydney home. On 13 January 2006, "Several members of the paparazzi retaliated ... squirting Ledger and Williams with water pistols on the red carpet at the Sydney premiere of "Brokeback Mountain"".


title: Heath Ledger

text: After his performance on stage at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards, when he had giggled in presenting "Brokeback Mountain" as a nominee for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, the "Los Angeles Times" referred to his presentation as an "apparent gay spoof". Ledger called the "Times" later and explained that his levity resulted from stage fright, saying that he had been told that he would be presenting the award only minutes earlier; he stated: "I am so sorry and I apologise for my nervousness. I would be absolutely horrified if my stage fright was misinterpreted as a lack of respect for the film, the topic and for the amazing filmmakers."


title: Heath Ledger

text: After learning that two cinemas in Utah refused to show "Brokeback Mountain", Ledger said: "I don't think the movie is [controversial] but I think maybe the Mormons in Utah do. I think it's hilarious and very immature of a society". In the same interview with the "Herald Sun" newspaper, Ledger mistakenly claimed that lynchings had occurred in West Virginia as recently as the 1980s; state scholars disputed his statement, asserting that no documented lynchings had occurred in West Virginia since 1931.


title: Heath Ledger

text: In an interview with Sarah Lyall, published in "The New York Times" on 4 November 2007, Ledger stated that he often could not sleep when taking on roles, and that the role of the Joker in "The Dark Knight" (2008) was causing his usual insomnia: "Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. ... I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." At that time, he told Lyall that he had taken two Ambien pills, after taking just one had not sufficed, and those left him in "a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing".


title: Heath Ledger

text: Prior to his return to New York City from his last film assignment in London, in January 2008, while he was apparently suffering from some kind of respiratory illness, he reportedly complained to his "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" co-star Christopher Plummer that he was continuing to have difficulty sleeping and taking pills to help with that problem: "Confirming earlier reports that Ledger hadn't been feeling well on set, Plummer says, 'we all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights. But Heath's went on and I don't think he dealt with it immediately with the antibiotics... I think what he did have was the walking pneumonia.' [...] On top of that, 'He was saying all the time, 'dammit, I can't sleep'... and he was taking all these pills to help him'".


title: Heath Ledger

text: Speaking to "Interview" magazine after Ledger's death, Michelle Williams confirmed reports that the actor had experienced trouble sleeping: "For as long as I'd known him, he had bouts with insomnia. He had too much energy. His mind was turning, turning, turning – always turning".


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger was "widely reported to have struggled with substance abuse". Following Ledger's death, "Entertainment Tonight" aired video footage from 2006 in which Ledger stated that he "used to smoke five joints a day for 20 years" and news outlets reported that his drug abuse had prompted Williams to request that he move out of their apartment in Brooklyn. Ledger's publicist asserted that reportage regarding Ledger's alleged drug use had been inaccurate.


title: Heath Ledger

text: At around 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on 22 January 2008, Ledger was found unconscious in his bed by his housekeeper, Teresa Solomon, and his massage therapist, Diana Wolozin, in his loft at 421 Broome Street in the SoHo neighbourhood of Manhattan.


title: Heath Ledger

text: According to police, Wolozin, who had arrived early for a 3 p.m. appointment with Ledger, telephoned his friend


title: Heath Ledger

text: Mary-Kate Olsen for help. Olsen, who was in Los Angeles at the time, directed her New York City private security guard to go to the scene. At 3:26 p.m., "less than 15 minutes after she first saw him in bed and only a few moments after the first call to Ms. Olsen", Wolozin dialed 911 "to say that Mr. Ledger was not breathing". At the urging of the 911 operator, Wolozin administered CPR, which was unsuccessful in reviving him.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Paramedics and emergency medical technicians arrived seven minutes later, at 3:33 p.m. ("at almost exactly the same moment as a private security guard summoned by Ms. Olsen") but were also unable to revive him. At 3:36 p.m., Ledger was pronounced dead, and his body was removed from the apartment. He was 28 years old.


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 6 February 2008, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York released its conclusions. Those conclusions were based on an initial autopsy that occurred 23 January 2008, and a subsequent complete toxicological analysis. The report concluded that Ledger died "as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine". It added: "We have concluded that the manner of death is accident[al], resulting from the abuse of prescribed medications."


title: Heath Ledger

text: While the medications found in the toxicological analysis may be prescribed in the United States for insomnia, anxiety, pain or common cold symptoms (doxylamine), the vast majority of physicians in America are extremely reluctant to prescribe multiple benzodiazepines (e.g. diazepam, alprazolam and temazepam) to a single patient, let alone to prescribe such medications to a patient already taking a mix of oxycodone and hydrocodone. Although the Associated Press and other outlets reported that police estimated Ledger's death occurred between 1 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. on 22 January 2008, the Medical Examiner's Office announced that it would not publicly disclose the official estimated time of death. The official announcement of the cause and manner of Ledger's death heightened concerns about the growing problems of prescription drug abuse or misuse and combined drug intoxication (CDI).


title: Heath Ledger

text: In 2017, Jason Payne-James, a forensic pathologist, asserted that Ledger might have survived if hydrocodone and oxycodone had been left out of the combination of drugs that the actor took just prior to his death. He furthermore stated that the mixture of drugs, combined with a possible chest infection, caused Ledger to stop breathing.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Late in February 2008, a DEA investigation of medical professionals relating to Ledger's death exonerated two American physicians, who practice in Los Angeles and Houston, of any wrongdoing, determining that "the doctors in question had prescribed Ledger other medications – not the pills that killed him."


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 4 August 2008, Mary-Kate Olsen's attorney Michael Miller issued a statement denying that Olsen supplied Ledger with the drugs causing his death and asserting that she did not know their source. In his statement, Miller said specifically, "Despite tabloid speculation, Mary-Kate Olsen had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them."


title: Heath Ledger

text: After a flurry of further media speculation, on 6 August 2008, the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan closed its investigation into Ledger's death without filing any charges and rendering moot its subpoena of Olsen. While the clearing of the two doctors and Olsen, and the closing of the investigation because the prosecutors in the Manhattan US Attorney's Office "don't believe there's a viable target," it is still not known how Ledger obtained the oxycodone and hydrocodone in the lethal drug combination that killed him.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Eleven months after Ledger's death, on 23 December 2008, Jake Coyle, writing for the Associated Press, announced that "Heath Ledger's death was voted 2008's top entertainment story by U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press". He claimed that this was partially a result of the "shock and confusion" surrounding the circumstances of Ledger's death, as well as due to Ledger's "legacy [...] in a roundly acclaimed performance as the Joker in the year's biggest box office hit "The Dark Knight".


title: Heath Ledger

text: After Ledger's death, in response to some press reports about his will, filed in New York City on 28 February 2008, and his daughter's access to his financial legacy, his father, Kim Ledger, said that he considered the financial well-being of Heath's daughter Matilda Rose an "absolute priority," whilst also stating that her mother, Michelle Williams, was "an integral part of our family". He added, "They will be taken care of and that's how Heath would want it to be". Some of Ledger's relatives may be challenging the legal status of his will signed in 2003, prior to his involvement with Williams and the birth of their daughter and not updated to include them, which divides half of his estate between his parents and half among his siblings; they claim that there is a second, unsigned will, which leaves most of that estate to Matilda Rose. Williams' father, Larry Williams, has also joined the controversy about Ledger's will, as it was filed in New York City soon after his death.


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 31 March 2008, stimulating another controversy pertaining to Ledger's estate, Gemma Jones and Janet Fife-Yeomans published an "Exclusive" report, in "The Daily Telegraph", citing Ledger's uncle Haydn Ledger and other family members, who "believe the late actor may have fathered a secret love child" when he was 17, and stating that "If it is confirmed that Ledger is the girl's biological father, it could split his multi-million dollar estate between ... Matilda Rose ... and his secret love child." A few days later, reports citing telephone interviews with Ledger's uncles Haydn and Mike Ledger and the family of the other little girl, published in "OK!" and "Us Weekly", "denied" those "claims", with Ledger's uncles and the little girl's mother and stepfather describing them as unfounded "rumors" distorted and exaggerated by the media.


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 15 July 2008, Fife-Yeomans reported further, via Australian News Limited, that "While Ledger left everything to his parents and three sisters, it is understood they have legal advice that under Western Australia law, Matilda Rose is entitled to the lion's share" of his estate; its executors, Kim Ledger's former business colleague Robert John Collins and Geraldton accountant William Mark Dyson, "have applied for probate in the West Australian Supreme Court in Perth, advertising for 'creditors and other persons' having claims on the estate to lodge them by 11 August 2008 ... to ensure all debts are paid before the estate is distributed..." According to this report by Fife-Yeomans, earlier reports citing Ledger's uncles, and subsequent reports citing Ledger's father, which do not include his actual posthumous earnings, "his entire fortune, mostly held in Australian trusts, is likely to be worth up to $20 million."


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 27 September 2008, Ledger's father Kim stated that "the family has agreed to leave the US$16.3 million fortune to Matilda," adding: "There is no claim. Our family has gifted everything to Matilda." In October 2008, "Forbes" estimated Ledger's annual earnings from October 2007 through October 2008 – including his posthumous share of "The Dark Knight"s gross income of "US$1 billion in box office revenue worldwide" – as "US$20 million".


title: Heath Ledger

text: As the news of Ledger's death became public, throughout the night of 22 January 2008, and the following day, media crews, mourners, fans, and other onlookers began gathering outside his apartment building, with some leaving flowers or other memorial tributes.


title: Heath Ledger

text: The following day, at 10:50 am Australian time, Ledger's parents and sister appeared outside his mother's house in Applecross, a riverside suburb of Perth, and read a short statement to the media expressing their grief and desire for privacy. Within the next few days, memorial tributes were communicated by family members; the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd; the Deputy Premier of Western Australia, Eric Ripper; Warner Bros. (distributor of "The Dark Knight") and thousands of Ledger's fans around the world.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Several actors made statements expressing their sorrow at Ledger's death, including Daniel Day-Lewis, who dedicated his Screen Actors Guild Award to him, saying that he was inspired by Ledger's acting; Day-Lewis praised Ledger's performances in "Monster's Ball" and "Brokeback Mountain", describing the latter as "unique, perfect". Verne Troyer, who was working with Ledger on "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" at the time of his death, had a heart shape, an exact duplicate of a symbol that Ledger scrawled on a piece of paper with his email address, tattooed on his hand in remembrance of Ledger because Ledger "had made such an impression on [him]". On 1 February, in her first public statement after Ledger's death, Michelle Williams expressed her heartbreak and described Ledger's spirit as surviving in their daughter.


title: Heath Ledger

text: After attending private memorial ceremonies in Los Angeles, Ledger's family members returned with his body to Perth. On 9 February, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penrhos College, attracting considerable press attention; afterward Ledger's body was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery, followed by a private service attended by only 10 of his closest family members, with his ashes interred later in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery, next to two of his grandparents. Later that night, his family and friends gathered for a wake on Cottesloe Beach.


title: Heath Ledger

text: The Eskimo Joe song "Foreign Land" was written as a tribute to Ledger. The band were in New York at the time of his death.


title: Heath Ledger

text: In January 2011, the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia in Ledger's home town of Perth named a 575-seat theatre the Heath Ledger Theatre after him. For the opening of the theatre, Ledger's Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor was on display in the theatre's foyer along with his Joker costume.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Bon Iver's "Perth" was inspired by Heath Ledger. Justin Vernon, the lead singer and songwriter of the American indie folk band, revealed back in 2011 that he had begun working on the song in 2008 and was scheduled to meet with a music video director who was good friends with Ledger, Matt Amato. "The first thing I worked on, the riff and the beginning melodies, was the first song on the record, 'Perth,'" Vernon told "Exclaim!". Amato was directing the band's "The Wolves (Act I & II)" music video the day that Ledger died. "It was no longer about just making a Bon Iver music video anymore," Vernon says. "This was now our chance to be there with Matt as he grieved. It was a three-day wake." Amato told Vernon stories about Ledger that eventually became the inspiration for "Perth," the opening track to the band's second studio album "Bon Iver, Bon Iver" (2011).


title: Heath Ledger

text: Portraying a variety of roles, from romantic heroes to tragic characters, Ledger created a hodgepodge of characters that are deliberately unlike one another, stating: "I feel like I am wasting my time if I repeat myself". He also reflected on his inability to be happy with his work, "I feel the same thing about everything I do. The day I say, 'It's good' is the day I should start doing something else." Ledger liked to wait between jobs so that he would start creatively hungry on new projects. In his own words, acting was about harnessing "the infinite power of belief," thus using belief as a tool for creating.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Directors who have worked with the actor praised him for his creativity, seriousness, and intuition. "I've never felt as old as I did watching Heath explore his talents," "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan has written, expressing amazement over the actor's working process, genuine curiosity and charisma. Marc Forster, who directed Ledger in "Monster's Ball", complimented him as taking the job "very seriously", being disciplined, observant, understanding, and intuitive. In 2007, director Todd Haynes compared Ledger's presence to actor James Dean, casting Ledger as Robbie Clarke, a fictive personification of Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There". Drawing on the similar characteristics between the actors, Haynes further highlighted Ledger's "precocious seriousness" and intuition. He also felt that Ledger had a rare maturity beyond his years." Ledger, however, disconnected himself and acting from perfectionism. "I'm always gonna pull myself apart and dissect [the work]. I mean, there's no such thing as perfection in what [actors] do. Pornos are more perfect than we are, because they're actually fucking."


title: Heath Ledger

text: "Some people find their shtick," Ledger reflected on the categorisation of style. "I never figured out who 'Heath Ledger' is on film: 'This is what you expect when you hire me, and it will be recognisable'... People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and can describe you. That's fine. But there are so many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note."


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger's death affected the marketing campaign for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008) and also both the production and marketing of Terry Gilliam's film "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", with both directors intending to celebrate and pay tribute to his work in these films. Although Gilliam temporarily suspended production on the latter film, he expressed determination to "salvage" it, perhaps using computer-generated imagery (CGI), and dedicated it to Ledger. In February 2008, as a "memorial tribute to the man many have called one of the best actors of his generation," Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell signed on to take over Ledger's role, becoming multiple incarnations of his character, Tony, transformed in this "magical re-telling of the Faust story". The three actors donated their fees for the film to Ledger's and Williams's daughter.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Speaking of editing "The Dark Knight," on which Ledger had completed his work in October 2007, Nolan recalled, "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day. ... But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish." All of Ledger's scenes appear as he completed them in the filming; in editing the film, Nolan added no "digital effects" to alter Ledger's actual performance posthumously. Nolan dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory, as well as to the memory of technician Conway Wickliffe, who was killed during a car accident while preparing one of the film's stunts.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Released in July 2008, "The Dark Knight" broke several box office records and received both popular and critical accolades, especially with regard to Ledger's performance as the Joker. Even film critic David Denby, who does not praise the film overall in his pre-release review in "The New Yorker", evaluates Ledger's work highly, describing his performance as both "sinister and frightening" and Ledger as "mesmerising in every scene", concluding: "His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss." Attempting to dispel widespread speculations that Ledger's performance as the Joker had in any way led to his death (as Denby and others suggest), Ledger's co-star and friend Christian Bale, who played opposite him as Batman, has stressed that, as an actor, Ledger greatly enjoyed meeting the challenges of creating that role, an experience that Ledger himself described as "the most fun I've ever had, or probably ever will have, playing a character". Terry Gilliam also refuted the claims that playing the Joker made him crazy, calling it "absolute nonsense" and going on to say, "Heath was so solid. His feet were on the ground and he was the least neurotic person I've ever met."


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger received numerous awards for his Joker role in "The Dark Knight". On 10 November 2008, he was nominated for two People's Choice Awards related to his work on the film, "Best Ensemble Cast" and "Best Onscreen Match-Up" (shared with Christian Bale), and Ledger won an award for "Match-Up" in the ceremony aired live on CBS in January 2009.


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 11 December 2008, it was announced that Ledger had been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight"; he subsequently won the award at the 66th Golden Globe Awards ceremony telecast on NBC on 11 January 2009, with "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan accepting on his behalf.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Film critics, co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Caine and many of Ledger's peers in the film community joined Bale in calling for and predicting a nomination for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in recognition of Ledger's achievement in "The Dark Knight". Ledger's subsequent nomination was announced on 22 January 2009, the anniversary of his death.


title: Heath Ledger

text: Ledger went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second person to win a posthumous Academy Award for acting (after fellow Australian actor Peter Finch, who won for 1976's "Network"), as well as the first comic-book movie actor to win an Oscar for their acting. Ledger's family attended the ceremony on 22 February 2009, with his parents and sister accepting the award onstage on his behalf. Following talks with the Ledger family in Australia, the Academy determined that Ledger's daughter, Matilda Rose, would own the award. However, due to Matilda's age, she will not gain full ownership of the statuette until her eighteenth birthday in 2023. Her mother, Michelle Williams, will hold the statuette in trust for Matilda until that time.


title: Heath Ledger

text: On 4 April 2017, a trailer was released for the documentary "I Am Heath Ledger", which was released on 3 May 2017. It features archival footage of Ledger and interviews.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970–1974 government. In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment. Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership, and was succeeded by John Major, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: A polarising figure in British politics, Thatcher is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in Britain, with the complicated legacy attributed to Thatcherism debated into the 21st century.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her parents were Alfred Roberts (1892–1970), from Northamptonshire, and Beatrice Ethel Stephenson (1888–1960), from Lincolnshire. Her father's maternal grandmother, Catherine Sullivan, was born in County Kerry, Ireland.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Roberts spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned a tobacconist's and a grocery shop. In 1938, before the Second World War, the Roberts family briefly gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. With her elder sister Muriel, Margaret saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Alfred was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher. He brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist, attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church, but Margaret was more sceptical; the future scientist told a friend that she could not believe in angels, having calculated that they needed a breastbone long to support wings. Alfred came from a Liberal family but stood (as was then customary in local government) as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43, and outside school, while the Second World War was ongoing, she voluntarily worked as a fire watcher in the local ARP service. Other students thought of Roberts as the "star scientist", although mistaken advice regarding cleaning ink from parquetry almost caused chlorine gas poisoning. In her upper sixth year Roberts was accepted for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, a women's college, starting in 1944. After another candidate withdrew, Roberts entered Oxford in October 1943.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with a second-class degree in chemistry, after specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. She also received the degree of Master of Arts in 1950 (as an Oxford BA, she was entitled to the degree 21 terms after her matriculation). Roberts did not only study chemistry as she intended to be a chemist only for a short period of time, already thinking about law and politics. She was reportedly prouder of becoming the first prime minister with a science degree than becoming the first female prime minister. While prime minister she attempted to preserve Somerville as a women's college. Twice a week outside study she worked in a local forces canteen.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During her time at Oxford, Roberts was noted for her isolated and serious attitude. Her first boyfriend, Tony Bray (1926–2014), recalled that she was "very thoughtful and a very good conversationalist. That's probably what interested me. She was good at general subjects". Roberts's enthusiasm for politics as a girl made him think of her as "unusual" and her parents as "slightly austere" and "very proper".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. In 1948 she applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated". Jon Agar in "Notes and Records" argues that her understanding of modern scientific research later impacted her views as prime minister.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Roberts joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno, Wales, in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. Meanwhile, she became a high-ranking affiliate of the Vermin Club, a group of grassroots Conservatives formed in response to a derogatory comment made by Aneurin Bevan. One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates. Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the party's approved list; she was selected in January 1950 (aged 24) and added to the approved list "post ante".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1949 she met divorcé Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy businessman, who drove her to her Essex train. After their first meeting she described him to Muriel as "not a very attractive creature – very reserved but quite nice". In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream. She married at Wesley's Chapel and her children were baptised there, but she and her husband began attending Church of England services and would later convert to Anglicanism.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the Labour seat of Dartford. The local party selected her as its candidate because, though not a dynamic public speaker, Roberts was well-prepared and fearless in her answers. A prospective candidate, Bill Deedes, recalled: "Once she opened her mouth, the rest of us began to look rather second-rate." She attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate; in 1950, she was the youngest Conservative candidate in the country. She lost on both occasions to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by future husband Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation. Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered prematurely by Caesarean section.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative Party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955. She chose not to stand as a candidate in the 1955 general election, in later years stating: "I really just felt the twins were [...] only two, I really felt that it was too soon. I couldn't do that." Afterwards, Thatcher began looking for a Conservative safe seat and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election. Benefiting from her fortunate result in a lottery for backbenchers to propose new legislation, Thatcher's maiden speech was, unusually, in support of her private member's bill, the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public; the bill was successful and became law. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching as a judicial corporal punishment.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's talent and drive caused her to be mentioned as a future prime minister in her early 20s although she herself was more pessimistic, stating as late as 1970: "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime – the male population is too prejudiced." In October 1961 she was promoted to the frontbench as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry for Pensions by Harold Macmillan. Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted. After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election, she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of giving tenants the Right to Buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing they would unintentionally produce effects that would distort the economy.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Jim Prior suggested Thatcher as a Shadow Cabinet member after the Conservatives' 1966 defeat, but party leader Edward Heath and Chief Whip William Whitelaw eventually chose Mervyn Pike as the Conservative Shadow Cabinet's sole woman member. At the 1966 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work. Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's bill to decriminalise male homosexuality. She voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion, as well as a ban on hare coursing. She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1967, the United States Embassy chose Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that allowed her to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Although she was not yet a Shadow Cabinet member, the embassy reportedly described her to the State Department as a possible future prime minister. The description helped Thatcher meet with prominent people during a busy itinerary focused on economic issues, including Paul Samuelson, Walt Rostow, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer and Nelson Rockefeller. Following the visit, Heath appointed Thatcher to the Shadow Cabinet as Fuel and Power spokeswoman. Before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokeswoman and later to Education.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1968, Enoch Powell delivered his "Rivers of Blood" speech in which he strongly criticised Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the then-proposed Race Relations Bill. When Heath telephoned Thatcher to inform her that he would sack Powell from the Shadow Cabinet, she recalled that she "really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis". She believed that his main points about Commonwealth immigration were correct and that the selected quotations from his speech had been taken out of context. In a 1991 interview for "Today", Thatcher stated that she thought Powell had "made a valid argument, if in sometimes regrettable terms".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Around this time, she gave her first Commons speech as a shadow transport minister and highlighted the need for investment in British Rail. She argued: "[...] if we build bigger and better roads, they would soon be saturated with more vehicles and we would be no nearer solving the problem." Thatcher made her first visit to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1969 as the Opposition Transport spokeswoman, and in October delivered a speech celebrating her ten years in Parliament. In early 1970, she told "The Finchley Press" that she would like to see a "reversal of the permissive society".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The Conservative Party, led by Edward Heath, won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. Thatcher caused controversy when, after only a few days in office, she withdrew Labour's Circular 10/65 which attempted to force comprehensivisation, without going through a consultation process. She was highly criticised for the speed at which she carried this out. Consequently, she drafted her own new policy (Circular 10/70), which ensured that local authorities were not forced to go comprehensive. Her new policy was not meant to stop the development of new comprehensives; she said: "We shall [...] expect plans to be based on educational considerations rather than on the comprehensive principle."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher supported Lord Rothschild's 1971 proposal for market forces to affect government funding of research. Although many scientists opposed the proposal, her research background probably made her sceptical of their claim that outsiders should not interfere with funding. The department evaluated proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although Thatcher was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education and attempted to preserve grammar schools, during her tenure as education secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals (roughly 9 per cent) for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent. Nevertheless, she managed to save 94 grammar schools.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During her first months in office she attracted public attention due to the government's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools, while administering public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk but agreed to provide younger children with daily for nutritional purposes. She also argued that she was simply carrying on with what the Labour government had started since they had stopped giving free milk to secondary schools. Milk would still be provided to those children that required it on medical grounds, and schools could still sell milk. The aftermath of the milk row hardened her determination; she told the editor-proprietor Harold Creighton of "The Spectator": "Don't underestimate me, I saw how they broke Keith, but they won't break me."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Cabinet papers later revealed that she opposed the policy but had been forced into it by the Treasury. Her decision provoked a storm of protest from Labour and the press, leading to her being notoriously nicknamed "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". She reportedly considered leaving politics in the aftermath and later wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson . I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, subsequently losing the February 1974 general election. Labour formed a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially seen as the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a fresh start. Her main support came from the parliamentary 1922 Committee and "The Spectator", but Thatcher's time in office gave her the reputation of a pragmatist rather than that of an ideologue. She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership. In the second ballot she defeated Whitelaw, Heath's preferred successor. Thatcher's election had a polarising effect on the party; her support was stronger among MPs on the right, and also among those from southern England, and those who had not attended public schools or Oxbridge.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher became Conservative Party leader and Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975; she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath was never reconciled to Thatcher's leadership of the party.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Television critic Clive James, writing in "The Observer" prior to her election as Conservative Party leader, compared her voice of 1973 to "a cat sliding down a blackboard". Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance, Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher began attending lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by poultry magnate Antony Fisher; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and became the face of the ideological movement opposing the British welfare state. Keynesian economics, they believed, was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher intended to promote neoliberal economic ideas at home and abroad. Despite setting the direction of her foreign policy for a Conservative government, Thatcher was distressed by her repeated failure to shine in the House of Commons. Consequently, Thatcher decided that as "her voice was carrying little weight at home", she would "be heard in the wider world". Thatcher undertook visits across the Atlantic, establishing an international profile and promoting her economic and foreign policies. She toured the United States in 1975 and met President Gerald Ford, visiting again in 1977, when she met President Jimmy Carter. Among other foreign trips, she met Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during a visit to Iran in 1978. Thatcher chose to travel without being accompanied by her shadow foreign secretary, Reginald Maudling, in an attempt to make a bolder personal impact.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In domestic affairs, Thatcher opposed Scottish devolution (home rule) and the creation of a Scottish Assembly. She instructed Conservative MPs to vote against the Scotland and Wales Bill in December 1976, which was successfully defeated, and then when new Bills were proposed she supported amending the legislation to allow the English to vote in the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that then Foreign Secretary James Callaghan warned his fellow Labour Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy", telling them: "If I were a young man, I would emigrate." In mid-1978, the economy began to recover, and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Now prime minister, Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year, and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". A general election was called after the Callaghan ministry lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Thatcher became the first female British prime minister.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1976, Thatcher gave her "Britain Awake" foreign policy speech which lambasted the Soviet Union, saying it was "bent on world dominance". The Soviet Army journal "Red Star" reported her stance in a piece headlined "Iron Lady Raises Fears", alluding to her remarks on the Iron Curtain. "The Sunday Times" covered the "Red Star" article the next day, and Thatcher embraced the epithet a week later; in a speech to Finchley Conservatives she likened it to the Duke of Wellington's nickname "The Iron Duke". The "Iron" metaphor followed her throughout ever since, and would become a generic sobriquet for other strong-willed female politicians.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher became prime minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at Downing Street she said, paraphrasing the Prayer of Saint Francis:


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In office throughout the 1980s, Thatcher was frequently referred to as the most powerful woman in the world.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was Opposition leader and prime minister at a time of increased racial tension in Britain. On the local elections of 1977, "The Economist" commented: "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties—specifically the National Front, which suffered a clear decline from last year." Her standing in the polls had risen by 11% after a 1978 interview for "World in Action" in which she said "the British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in", as well as "in many ways add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened". In the 1979 general election, the Conservatives had attracted votes from the NF, whose support almost collapsed. In a July 1979 meeting with Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw, Thatcher objected to the number of Asian immigrants, in the context of limiting the total of Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle in the UK to fewer than 10,000 over two years.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: As prime minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under scrutiny. states:


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Michael Shea, the Queen's press secretary, in 1986 leaked stories of a deep rift to "The Sunday Times". He said that she felt Thatcher's policies were "uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive". Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct [...] stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with her first chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply, and thereby lower inflation; introduced cash limits on public spending and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing. Cuts to higher education led to Thatcher being the first Oxonian post-war prime minister without an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, after a 738–319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies. The 1981 England riots resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar, that notably included the following lines:


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous prime minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened, she increased taxes, despite concerns expressed in a March 1981 statement signed by 364 leading economists, which argued there was "no basis in economic theory [...] for the Government's belief that by deflating demand they will bring inflation permanently under control", adding that "present policies will deepen the depression, erode the industrial base of our economy and threaten its social and political stability".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: By 1982, the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s. By 1983, overall economic growth was stronger, and inflation and mortgage rates had fallen to their lowest levels in 13 years, although manufacturing employment as a share of total employment fell to just over 30%, with total unemployment remaining high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During the 1982 Conservative Party Conference, Thatcher said: "We have done more to roll back the frontiers of socialism than any previous Conservative Government." She said at the Party Conference the following year that the British people had completely rejected state socialism and understood "the state has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves [...] There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher had been firmly opposed to British membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM, a precursor to European Economic and Monetary Union), believing that it would constrain the British economy, despite the urging of both Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe; in October 1990 she was persuaded by John Major, Lawson's successor as Chancellor, to join the ERM at what proved to be too high a rate.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates (a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home) with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident. The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership. Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong demonstration in London in March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest. The Community Charge was abolished in 1991 by her successor, John Major. It has since transpired that Thatcher herself had failed to register for the tax, and was threatened with financial penalties if she did not return her form.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher believed that the trade unions were harmful to both ordinary trade unionists and the public. She was committed to reducing the power of the unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to limit their power, but resistance eventually collapsed. Only 39% of union members voted Labour in the 1983 general election. According to the BBC's political correspondent in 2004, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation". The miners' strike of 1984–85 was the biggest and most devastating confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In March 1984, the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000. Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest. However, Scargill refused to hold a ballot on the strike, having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (in January and October 1982, and March 1983). This led to the strike being declared illegal by the High Court of Justice.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands War, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." Thatcher's opponents misrepresented her words as indicating contempt for the working class and have been employed in criticism of her ever since.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: After a year out on strike in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. Thatcher reflected on the end of the strike in her statement that "if anyone has won" it was "the miners who stayed at work" and all those "that have kept Britain going".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994. The resulting closure of 150 coal mines, some of which were not losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and had the effect of devastating entire communities. Strikes had helped bring down Heath's government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing hardliner Ian MacGregor as NCB leader, and ensuring that police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear contributed to her triumph over the striking miners.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days had been lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1,221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990, there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter. Thatcher's tenure also witnessed a sharp decline in trade union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in 1979 to 49.5% in 1985. In 1979 up until Thatcher's final year in office, trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism". After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses. The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Some of the privatised industries, including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement sometimes did so while still under state ownership. British Steel Corporation had made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed MacGregor chairmanship, which faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and halve the workforce. Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies such as Oftel (1984), Ofgas (1986), and the National Rivers Authority (1989). There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In most cases, privatisation benefited consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but results overall have been mixed. Not all privatised companies have had successful share price trajectories in the longer term. A 2010 review by the IEA states: "[I]t does seem to be the case that once competition and/or effective regulation was introduced, performance improved markedly [...] But I hasten to emphasise again that the literature is not unanimous."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher always resisted privatising British Rail and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley: "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation in 1990, she accepted the arguments for privatisation, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation to fuel economic growth. Chancellor Geoffrey Howe abolished the UK's exchange controls in 1979, which allowed more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 by the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, having declared "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political". Nevertheless, the British government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end. After the deaths of Sands and nine others, the strike ended. Some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of political status. Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984. Five people were killed, including the wife of minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to prepare for the Conservative Party conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her speech as planned, though rewritten from her original draft, in a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 6 November 1981, Thatcher and Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments. On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, which marked the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest, the Ulster Says No movement led by Ian Paisley attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast, Ian Gow, later assassinated by the PIRA, resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury, and all 15 Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher supported an active climate protection policy; she was instrumental in the passing of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the founding of the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction, the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the ratification of the Montreal Protocol on preserving the ozone.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream in the late 1980s, calling for a global treaty on climate change in 1989. Her speeches included one to the Royal Society in 1988, followed by another to the UN General Assembly in 1989.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher appointed Lord Carrington, an ennobled member of the party and former Secretary of State for Defence, to run the Foreign Office in 1979. Although considered a "wet", he avoided domestic affairs and got along well with Thatcher. One issue was what to do with Rhodesia, where the white-minority had determined to rule the prosperous, black-majority breakaway colony in the face of overwhelming international criticism. With the 1975 Portuguese collapse in the continent, South Africa (which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter) realised that their ally was a liability; black rule was inevitable, and the Thatcher government brokered a peaceful solution to end the Rhodesian Bush War in December 1979 via the Lancaster House Agreement. The conference at Lancaster House was attended by Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith, as well as by the key black leaders: Muzorewa, Mugabe, Nkomo and Tongogara. The result was the new Zimbabwean nation under black rule in 1980.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's first foreign-policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She condemned the invasion, said it showed the bankruptcy of a détente policy and helped convince some British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She gave weak support to US president Jimmy Carter who tried to punish the USSR with economic sanctions. Britain's economic situation was precarious, and most of NATO was reluctant to cut trade ties. Thatcher nevertheless gave the go-ahead for Whitehall to approve MI6 (along with the SAS) to undertake "disruptive action" in Afghanistan. As well working with the CIA in Operation Cyclone, they also supplied weapons, training and intelligence to the "mujaheddin".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The "Financial Times" reported in 2011 that her government had secretly supplied Iraq under Saddam Hussein with "non-lethal" military equipment since 1981.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Having withdrawn formal recognition from the Pol Pot regime in 1979, the Thatcher government backed the Khmer Rouge keeping their UN seat after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although Thatcher denied it at the time, it was revealed in 1991 that, while not directly training any Khmer Rouge, from 1983 the Special Air Service (SAS) was sent to secretly train "the armed forces of the Cambodian non-communist resistance" that remained loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his former prime minister Son Sann in the fight against the Vietnamese-backed puppet regime.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was". She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Council of Ministers chairman Nikolai Ryzhkov.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Despite opposite personalities, Thatcher bonded quickly with US president Ronald Reagan. She gave strong support to the Reagan administration's Cold War policies based on their shared distrust of communism. A sharp disagreement came in 1983 when Reagan did not consult with her on the invasion of Grenada.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During her first year as prime minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, permitting the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting in November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices). Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of 1985–86, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned from the government in protest.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In April 1986 she permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Polls suggested that fewer than one in three British citizens approved of her decision.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. During her talks with President George H. W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. Bush was apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation: "This was no time to go wobbly!" Thatcher's government supplied military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991. She applauded the coalition victory on the backbenches, while warning that "the victories of peace will take longer than the battles of war". It was disclosed in 2017 that Thatcher had suggested threatening Saddam with chemical weapons after the invasion of Kuwait.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 2 April 1982, the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British possessions of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of premiership". At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to oversee the conduct of the war, which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and "Operation Corporate" was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentine fatalities totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine torpedoed and sank the cruiser on 2 May.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and especially by Labour MP Tam Dalyell in Parliament for the decision to torpedo the "General Belgrano", but overall she was considered a competent and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983. Thatcher frequently referred after the war to the "Falklands spirit"; suggests that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peacetime cabinet government.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited as prime minister, and she was the first British prime minister to visit China. Throughout their meeting, she sought the PRC's agreement to a continued British presence in the territory. Deng insisted that the PRC's sovereignty over Hong Kong was non-negotiable but stated his willingness to settle the sovereignty issue with the British government through formal negotiations. Both governments promised to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity. After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Despite saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid, Thatcher opposed sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community (EEC). She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading its government to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government. Alan Merrydew of the Canadian broadcaster BCTV News asked Thatcher what her response was "to a reported ANC statement that they will target British firms in South Africa?" to which she later replied: "[...] when the ANC says that they will target British companies [...] This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism." During his visit to Britain five months after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela praised Thatcher: "She is an enemy of apartheid [...] We have much to thank her for."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher and her party supported British membership of the EEC in the 1975 national referendum and the Single European Act of 1986, and obtained the UK rebate on contributions, but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EEC approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation. Believing that the single market would result in political integration, Thatcher's opposition to further European integration became more pronounced during her premiership and particularly after her third government in 1987. In her Bruges speech in 1988, Thatcher outlined her opposition to proposals from the EEC, forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision-making:


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Sharing the concerns of French president François Mitterrand, Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In March 1990, Thatcher held a Chequers seminar on the subject of German reunification that was attended by members of her cabinet and historians such as Norman Stone, George Urban, Timothy Garton Ash and Gordon A. Craig. During the seminar, Thatcher described "what Urban called 'saloon bar clichés' about the German character, including 'angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex sentimentality. Those present were shocked to hear Thatcher's utterances and "appalled" at how she was "apparently unaware" about the post-war German collective guilt and Germans' attempts to work through their past. The words of the meeting were leaked by her foreign-policy advisor Charles Powell and, subsequently, her comments were met with fierce backlash and controversy.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During the same month, German chancellor Helmut Kohl reassured Thatcher that he would keep her "informed of all his intentions about unification", and that he was prepared to disclose "matters which even his cabinet would not know".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating (40%) of any post-war prime minister. Since Nigel Lawson's resignation as Chancellor in October 1989, polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party. A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings and pointed instead to her unbeaten election record.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In December 1989, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer. Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote, 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November, the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and tendency to override collegiate opinion, contributed to further discontent within her party.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In July 1989, Thatcher removed Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary after he and Lawson had forced her to agree to a plan for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain joined the ERM in October 1990.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned as deputy prime minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European monetary union. In his resignation speech on 13 November, which was instrumental in Thatcher's downfall, Howe attacked Thatcher's openly dismissive attitude to the government's proposal for a new European currency competing against existing currencies (a "hard ECU"):


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 14 November, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour. Although Thatcher led on the first ballot with the votes of 204 Conservative MPs (54.8%) to 152 votes (40.9%) for Heseltine, with 16 abstentions, she was four votes short of the required 15% majority. A second ballot was therefore necessary. Thatcher initially declared her intention to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her cabinet persuaded her to withdraw. After holding an audience with the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech, on 28 November she left Downing Street in tears. She reportedly regarded her ousting as a betrayal. Her resignation was a shock to many outside Britain, with such foreign observers as Henry Kissinger and Gorbachev expressing private consternation.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was replaced as head of government and party leader by Chancellor John Major, whose lead over Heseltine in the second ballot was sufficient for Heseltine to drop out. Major oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading to the 1992 general election, and led the party to a fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992. Thatcher had lobbied for Major in the leadership contest against Heseltine, but her support for him waned in later years.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher returned to the backbenches as a constituency parliamentarian after leaving the premiership. Her domestic approval rating recovered after her resignation, though public opinion remained divided on whether her government had been good for the country. Aged 66, she retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On leaving the Commons, Thatcher became the first former British prime minister to set up a foundation; the British wing of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was dissolved in 2005 due to financial difficulties. She wrote two volumes of memoirs, "The Downing Street Years" (1993) and "The Path to Power" (1995). In 1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" in July 1992, for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. Thatcher earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher became an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence. Commenting on the Yugoslav Wars, in a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent and for not supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In August 1992 she called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo, to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War, comparing the situation in Bosnia–Herzegovina to "the barbarities of Hitler's and Stalin's".


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated: "I could never have signed this treaty." She cited A. V. Dicey when arguing that, as all three main parties were in favour of the treaty, the people should have their say in a referendum.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher served as honorary chancellor of the College of William & Mary in Virginia from 1993 to 2000, while also serving as chancellor of the private University of Buckingham from 1992 to 1998, a university she had formally opened in 1976 as the former education secretary.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell", adding: "I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved." Blair responded in kind: "She was a thoroughly determined person, and that is an admirable quality."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations. She cited the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War. In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London. Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: At the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election following its defeat, she endorsed Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke. In 2002 she encouraged George W. Bush to aggressively tackle the "unfinished business" of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and praised Blair for his "strong, bold leadership" in standing with Bush in the Iraq War.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: She broached the same subject in her "", which was published in April 2002 and dedicated to Ronald Reagan, writing that there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam was toppled. Her book also said that Israel must trade land for peace and that the European Union (EU) was a "fundamentally unreformable", "classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Following several small strokes she was advised by her doctors not to engage in further public speaking. In March 2002 she announced that, on doctors' advice, she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 26 June 2003, Thatcher's husband Sir Denis died aged 88; he was cremated on 3 July at Mortlake Crematorium in London.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 11 June 2004, Thatcher (against doctors' orders) attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan. She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier. Thatcher flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 2005, Thatcher criticised how Blair had decided to invade Iraq two years previously. Although she still supported the intervention to topple Saddam Hussein, she said that (as a scientist) she would always look for "facts, evidence and proof" before committing the armed forces. She celebrated her 80th birthday on 13 October at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London; guests included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair. Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, was also in attendance and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks on the US. She was a guest of vice-president Dick Cheney and met secretary of state Condoleezza Rice during her visit. In February 2007 Thatcher became the first living British prime minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stood opposite that of her political hero, Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she remarked in the Members' Lobby of the Commons: "I might have preferred iron – but bronze will do [...] It won't rust."


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher, suffering low blood pressure, was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm. Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living former prime minister. Stone was previously commissioned to paint portraits of the Queen and Queen Mother.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a statue to Ronald Reagan, outside the US Embassy in London, but was unable to attend due to her frail health. She last attended a sitting of the House of Lords on 19 July 2010, and on 30 July 2011 it was announced that her office in the Lords had been closed. Earlier that month, Thatcher was named the most competent prime minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's daughter Carol that her mother had dementia in 2005, saying "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her memory loss". In her 2008 memoir, Carol wrote that her mother "could hardly remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she got to the end". She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when, in conversation, Thatcher confused the Falklands and Yugoslav conflicts; she recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that her husband Denis was dead.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher died on 8 April 2013, at the age of 87, after suffering a stroke. She had been staying at a suite in the Ritz Hotel in London since December 2012 after having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home in Belgravia. Her death certificate listed the primary causes of death as a "cerebrovascular accident" and "repeated transient ischaemic attack"; secondary causes were listed as a "carcinoma of the bladder" and dementia.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Details of Thatcher's funeral had been agreed with her in advance. She received a ceremonial funeral, including full military honours, with a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh attended her funeral, marking only the second time in the Queen's reign that she attended the funeral of any of her former prime ministers, after that of Churchill, who received a state funeral in 1965.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: After the service at St Paul's, Thatcher's body was cremated at Mortlake, where her husband had been cremated. On 28 September, a service for Thatcher was held in the All Saints Chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea's Margaret Thatcher Infirmary. In a private ceremony, Thatcher's ashes were interred in the hospital's grounds, next to her husband's.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcherism represented a systematic and decisive overhaul of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation of the economy, and high taxes. Thatcher generally supported the welfare state while proposing to rid it of abuses.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: She promised in 1982 that the highly popular National Health Service was "safe in our hands". At first, she ignored the question of privatising nationalised industries; heavily influenced by right-wing think tanks, and especially by Sir Keith Joseph, Thatcher broadened her attack. Thatcherism came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, liberal individualism, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher defined her own political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with the one-nation conservatism of her predecessor Edward Heath, in a 1987 interview published in "Woman's Own" magazine:


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The number of adults owning shares rose from 7 per cent to 25 per cent during her tenure, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55 per cent to 67 per cent in owner-occupiers from 1979 to 1990. The houses were sold at a discount of 33–55 per cent, leading to large profits for some new owners. Personal wealth rose by 80 per cent in real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house prices and increased earnings. Shares in the privatised utilities were sold below their market value to ensure quick and wide sales, rather than maximise national income.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: The "Thatcher years" were also marked by periods of high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics on the left of the political spectrum fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by mass unemployment as well as her monetarist economic policies remained blighted for decades, by such social problems as drug abuse and family breakdown. Unemployment did not fall below its May 1979 level during her tenure, only falling below its April 1979 level in 1990. The long-term effects of her policies on manufacturing remain contentious.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Speaking in Scotland in 2009, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax and withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain". Political economist Susan Strange termed the neoliberal financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.


title: Margaret Thatcher

text: Critics on the left describe her as divisive and say she condoned greed and selfishness. Leading Welsh politician Rhodri Morgan, among others, characterised Thatcher as a "Marmite" figure. Journalist Michael White, writing in the aftermath of the 2007–08 financial crisis, challenged the view that her reforms were still a net benefit. Others consider her approach to have been "a mixed bag" and " Curate's egg".