It has now been five years since Margaret Thatcher resigned as Britain’s Prime Minister. In her heyday(n.全盛时期) she strode the international headlines with such bravura（n.大胆、勇敢的尝试） that she seemed inevitable, a natural force. The world stage seemed just the right size for her, as she chaffed(v.戏弄，开玩笑) her conservative soul mate Ronald Reagan or flattered the “new man,” Mikhail Gorbachev.
Now the political world has begun to focus on the immensity of her achievement. She was elected to Parliament at 32 in 1958. She parried(v.在高尔夫中标准杆数得分) her way through the complacent, male-dominated councils of power—no woman had ever roiled those waters. Couldn’t the old boys see her coming? After all, there was nothing subtle about her personality or her approach.
From the start, she notes almost with bemusement(n.困惑), there was a contrast between her own “executive style” and her colleagues’ “more consultive style.” Thatcher laid down the law. In her 11-year leadership, she broke the crippling power of British unions, made many thousands of her countrymen homeowners, strengthened British ties with the U.S. and the Soviet Union and gave voice to Britain’s reluctance about joining Europe, a reluctance that still plagues（v.使困扰）her successor, John Major.
She is known now as the Iron Lady, but as a pretty, naïve young politician who cut through cant(n.伪善的话), prevarication（n.搪塞，推诿）and some very real problems, she must have been exhilarating（adj.令人愉快的）. Her rise, as she once described the star-is-born press coverage that greeted her maiden（adj.少女的，无经验的）speech in Commons, was “roses, roses all the way.”
