I will definitely be checking this out.
"How had the shy, socially insecure undergraduate managed
to get so far?"
"The answer is twofold: Though she had been socially
insecure, she was always politically self-confident, and the
male-chauvinist Tory party gave her the warm welcome that the
progressive women dons at Somerville College, Oxford had denied her. Its
principal, Janet Vaughn, later said that Thatcher “was set as steel as a
Conservative. . . . We used to entertain a good deal at weekends, but
she didn’t get invited. She had nothing to contribute, you see.”
"By contrast, the middle-aged men who ran the Tory party
from the engine room to the bridge relished the arrival of this clever
and pretty young woman who, as soon as she stood up to speak, became a
forcefully glamorous performer who could out-debate veteran socialists
and bring audiences to their feet. Though she encountered a little
antiwoman prejudice (often from other women) in her search for a
winnable constituency, it was more than outweighed by the favoritism
that senior male Tories displayed towards her and her advancement. She
was elected to the House of Commons two days after her 34th birthday and
became a junior minister two years after that."
