Margaret Thatcher

Meryl Streep shuffles down a London street wearing a kerchief, a drab beige overcoat and enough prosthetic wrinkles to pass as an octogenarian in the opening scene of her new movie about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "The Iron Lady. " For Streep, shooting the sequence provided a jarring taste of a specific kind of invisibility. "There is no more dismissible figure on the street than an old woman," Streep said over a mid-December lunch with her "Iron Lady" director, Phyllida Lloyd, in a cavernous suite at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

At night after she finished the day's shooting of "The Iron Lady" in London, Meryl Streep would undergo a kind of ritual. Makeup artists painstakingly removed the prosthetics that enabled Streep to play the former British prime minister in her senescent 80s, and the actress unbent her dowager's body and returned to her upright, lighthearted self. "I'd come home and lean against a doorjamb and stand up straight, you know, bend that way instead of this way," Streep said, throwing back her shoulders during an interview in her suite at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel in December.

When a Mama Grizzly meets an Iron Lady, you'd expect it to be set against a Godzilla-esque Tokyo skyline, rather than the more genteel surroundings of a London tea house or crumpet shop. Sarah Palin on Monday said on her Facebook page that she'd "love to" meet with former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher after a recent report that she'd made plans to visit Britain and had contacted Thatcher's people about a possible meet-up. Thatcher, who is nicknamed the Iron Lady after a 10-year premiership that saw her foster a "special relationship" with the United States and Republican President Reagan during the Cold War, is a natural ally of the Republican former Alaska governor.

The face peering from the ads and posters belongs to Meryl Streep, but the shadow that hovers over the land is definitely Margaret Thatcher's. The reaction to the film "The Iron Lady" has illuminated just how polarizing "Mrs. T. " (or "TBW" - "that bloody woman") remains a generation after her ouster from 10 Downing St. Love her or hate her - and there are plenty of people on both sides - it seems that hardly anyone here can watch the movie without their personal feelings entering into it. Put Sam Fogg in the "hate" camp.

In an apparent sharp escalation of the Irish Republican Army's campaign to bring violence closer to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party, a senior lawmaker who was considered Britain's most strident IRA opponent was killed Monday when a powerful bomb ripped through his car.

It's weird, watching a major movie about someone you worked for before the world discovered her, someone whose political party you then joined as a member of Parliament with her as prime minister, and someone who now appears on the cinema screen like an apparition from the past, with liveliness and youth breathed back into her. It's even more uncanny when this woman is played by an actor with such a genius for impersonation that you cannot help...

I resent Margaret Thatcher's verbal threats to Saddam Hussein from her cozy seat in Parliament. It's reminiscent of the school bully who starts a fight, then offers to hold the coats. If Maggie wants to hear that first shot, let her natives trade places in the front lines with our natives. Is peace only to be found in the dictionary? VIC TAILLE Hemet

Margaret Thatcher took Orange County by storm on Wednesday. The former British prime minister who came to California in early February to celebrate former President Ronald Reagan's 80th birthday, was all diplomacy and grace as she toured South Coast Plaza and later dined with local dignitaries. Today, she plans to visit Camp Pendleton to talk to Marines at the School of Infantry.

Margaret Thatcher, ousted as British prime minister 18 months ago, was made a baroness in honors announced by her successor John Major Saturday. Thatcher, 66, became a life peer in the House of Lords in the list of honors awarded by Queen Elizabeth II to political figures most of whom either didn't run again or lost their seats in April's election.

The Philip Morris tobacco company is hiring former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a nonsmoker, for $1 million to serve as its international political consultant, the Sunday Times said. The paper said Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, will seek her advice "on controversial issues, including the penetration of tobacco markets in Eastern Europe and the Third World."

It's weird, watching a major movie about someone you worked for before the world discovered her, someone whose political party you then joined as a member of Parliament with her as prime minister, and someone who now appears on the cinema screen like an apparition from the past, with liveliness and youth breathed back into her. It's even more uncanny when this woman is played by an actor with such a genius for impersonation that you cannot help...

There is far more softness than steel in "The Iron Lady," starring Meryl Streep as the iconic British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The film catches her long after she's left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age. Director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan have discarded most...

Meryl Streep shuffles down a London street wearing a kerchief, a drab beige overcoat and enough prosthetic wrinkles to pass as an octogenarian in the opening scene of her new movie about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "The Iron Lady. " For Streep, shooting the sequence provided a jarring taste of a specific kind of invisibility. "There is no more dismissible figure on the street than an old woman," Streep said over a mid-December lunch with her "Iron Lady" director, Phyllida Lloyd, in a cavernous suite at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

The scandal lasted just over a week. It began with questions about why 33-year-old businessman Adam Werrity had traveled extensively abroad with his longtime friend, British Defense Minister Liam Fox, signs of his unusually close relationship with a Cabinet minister despite holding no official government position. And it grew as a torrent of allegations emerged about the array of individuals and companies that contributed to Werrity's mosaic of security-related businesses and foundations, which may have supported his first-class travel and lavish lifestyle and suggested he was brokering access to a senior minister for wealthy donors.

Is the candidate with the "titanium spine" comparing herself to the Iron Lady? Michele Bachmann drew a connection with Margaret Thatcher in a speech to a veterans group today, praising the resolve of the former British prime minister along with another GOP icon, Ronald Reagan. "It took two very strong leaders on the world stage, one a woman and one a man, to reverse the course of their respective countries," Bachmann said at the American Legion convention in Minneapolis. The Minnesota congresswoman equated the Iranian hostage crisis, resolved after Reagan took office, to Thatcher's handling of the Falkland War, saying, "We should heed the lessons that they hold for dealing with those who seek to wreak havoc on peace and on democracy across the world today.

When a Mama Grizzly meets an Iron Lady, you'd expect it to be set against a Godzilla-esque Tokyo skyline, rather than the more genteel surroundings of a London tea house or crumpet shop. Sarah Palin on Monday said on her Facebook page that she'd "love to" meet with former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher after a recent report that she'd made plans to visit Britain and had contacted Thatcher's people about a possible meet-up. Thatcher, who is nicknamed the Iron Lady after a 10-year premiership that saw her foster a "special relationship" with the United States and Republican President Reagan during the Cold War, is a natural ally of the Republican former Alaska governor.

Online home sellers and buyers want a real estate agent with the experience of Margaret Thatcher, the integrity of Abraham Lincoln and the intellect of Albert Einstein, according to a just-for-fun survey by online real estate company HomeGain. Consumers who participated in HomeGain's "Perfect Agent" survey in November were asked to pick the five most important attributes in a real estate agent and identify a celebrity or historical figure that best exemplifies that attribute.

Francis Pym, an antagonist of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who served as her foreign secretary during the Falklands War, died Friday after a long illness, his family said. He was 86. Pym served two years as defense secretary during Thatcher's first term as prime minister. In 1982, while Britain was battling Argentina to keep control of the Falkland Islands, he was named foreign secretary after the resignation of Peter Carrington. Thatcher fired Pym after winning the 1983 election, and he became increasingly critical of her policies.

Lord Gilmour, 81, a Conservative lawmaker who was a thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher when she served as Britain's prime minister, died Friday in West Middlesex Hospital, west of London, after a short illness, according to his son David Gilmour. While holding the Cabinet-level post of deputy foreign secretary, Ian Gilmour was fired by Thatcher in 1981 after he warned that her hard-line tactics would lose voters' support.