It has now been five years since Margaret Thatcher resigned as Britain’s Prime Minister. In her heyday she strode the international headlines with such bravura that she seemed inevitable, a natural force. The world stage seemed just the right size for her, as she chaffed 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. How on earth did she manage to get there She was elected to Parliament at 32 in 1958. She parried 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. As The Path to Power, the second volume of her autobiography, makes clear, Thatcher was probably too simple and direct for the Tories, with their heavy baggage of class and compromise. She traveled light, proud of her roots as a grocer’s daughter from the small town of Grantham but never tethered by working-class resentments or delusions of inferiority. Her parents taught her the verities they believed in: Methodism. hard work, thrift and the importance of the individual. She has never wavered from them, and they run through the book. "Nothing in our house was wasted." Or, "I had less leisure time than other children." These are boasts of a childhood recalled in tranquility. Later they became a philosophy: "Being conservative is never merely a matter of income, but a whole way of life, a will to take responsibility for oneself.\