One second while I don the asbestos underwear ...

OK. I recall being in uniform in 1982 when the Falklands Conflict started, and can recall the change of mood which everyone felt on hearing that the ARA "Belgrano" had been sunk. Up to this point, there had been barely half a dozen deaths and for all the sabre-rattling and mobilisation, it was possible to imagine that there might be some sort of face-saving settlement. After the sinking, there was no doubt that we were in real earnest.

[I never went near the Falklands, though two of the people I had known in training were with the Task Force, and some of the radios with which we were to have been issued went as well, presumably on the "Atlantic Conveyor". Ooops !]

It should not be forgotten that Maggie's bellicose stance over the Falklands was fully supported by the Labour party under lifelong peace campaigner Michael Foot; after decades of railing against militarism and authoritarianism, he suddenly found himself facing a reincarnation of Franco [Galtieri], and it would have been a paradoxical betrayal of his principles to oppose Maggie at that point.

I always found Maggie's imposition of her own suburban prejudices on Britain to become increasingly dictatorial as time went on, and while I prefer not to join those howling for her public execution, I think it was unfortunate that she did not step down, or that a plausible alternative PM in the Conservative party did not challenge her, much sooner.

Maggie probably suffered from a swollen head after 1982, if her reported words to George Bush Sr on the outbreak of the Gulf crisis in 1990 are true; "Now George, this is no time to get wobbly!"