. . . BUT SHE WAS NEVER AFRAID TO USE HER ‘FINE ANKLES’ TO GET HER WAY

MRS THATCHER ‘glowed with sex appeal’ and used it to wield power over male politicians, according to Ms Slocock’s book.

She would wear ‘sheer black tights’ and sit in a way she knew showed off her ‘fine ankles and pins’ because it helped her win arguments with men. And she did it far more subtly than Theresa May, says Ms Slocock. ‘Mrs Thatcher did not resort to low-cut outfits – unlike Theresa May on one of her first trips to try to negotiate Brexit with EU ministers, an unfortunate look, I thought.’

However, Mrs Thatcher had no qualms about ‘using her femininity in the exercise of her power’.

Ms Slocock recalls: ‘I could see when I sat taking notes with her in the No10 study at “one-to-ones” with Ministers or other men. It was obvious to me, as it would be to any other woman, that she knew she had good legs and fine ankles, even in her 60s.

‘She arranged them so that others could always admire them, wearing black sheer tights and shaving her legs.’

Ms Slocock says the effect Mrs Thatcher had on entering a room packed full of men was ‘electric, energising and exciting’. She ‘was after power, not sex… but the hormonal effects are similar: you glow’ – and ‘liked tall men who looked as at home in a military uniform as a business suit’.

A young journalist called her ‘distinctly sexy, with a naughty flush about her cheeks’. The writer’s name was Boris Johnson.