When she took up residence in 10 Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher vowed swift change. She — and the rest of the British public — would be disappointed. In Thatcher’s first year in office, inflation and unemployment remained unchecked — not exactly a record a new prime minister would be eager to promote. But it was clear that Thatcher wasn’t slacking off, as TIME’s cover story in 1981 portrayed, profiling her long days of attempting to bring Britain back to greatness.
Confrontation, in fact, is her metier, and even the day-to-day combat in the highly charged arena at the House of Commons stimulates her. Recently she confessed: “The adrenaline flows. They really come out fighting at me, and I fight back. I stand there and I know, ‘Now come on, Maggie, you are wholly on your own. No one can help you.’ And I love it.” Virtually every demand of public office seems to agree with her. Thatcher looks, if anything, more youthful than when she moved into Downing Street. There is little relaxation in her regimen. Her staff is awed by her “terrific appetite for work and her energy level.”