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At Oxford's Somerville College, Margaret studied chemistry, not out of any basic interest, but because she knew it would guarantee a job. She became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, but she was not allowed to participate in debates of the prestigious Oxford Union, long a training ground for British political leaders; not until 1963 were women admitted as members. She was graduated with a bachelor of science degree, an upper-class accent acquired by elocution lessons, and an unflagging determination to enter politics.
In 1947 she took a job as a research chemist with British Xylonite plastics in Essex and immediately began turning up at local Conservative Party affairs. Impressed Tory officials proposed her as their candidate for Dartford, then a safe Labor seat in Kent. Being chosen as a sacrificial lamb is the classic way to begin a career in British politics, and Margaret eagerly accepted. In the 1950 election Margaret, then 24, was the youngest woman running for Parliament. She lost, but Kingsley Wood, then leader of the Tories on the Dartford Council, recalls that "we all knew she was something different. She worked tirelessly and had the knack of remembering everyone's name."
It was also in 1950 that Margaret met tall, angular Denis Thatcher, a divorced businessman ten years her senior. They were married a year later. He then worked for a paint company that his family owned, and had run for Parliament himself, also unsuccessfully. More important, Denis Thatcher provided the emotional, financial and social security for her own career. He eventually became an executive director of the Burmah Oil Company before retiring in 1975.
In 1953 Margaret gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl—an instant family that her friends cite as the ultimate in efficiency. Mark went to Harrow and is now the representative of an Australia-based freight company. His sister Carol studied law at London University and has been working in Australia as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald. She returned to London in time for the last weeks of the campaign.
Four months after the twins were born, Margaret qualified as a barrister specializing in tax and patent law. She also kept her political ties. In 1959, when the twins were six and in boarding school, she was adopted as the Conservative candidate for Finchley, a safe Tory seat in the London suburbs. Thatcher romped home with a majority of 16,260 in the Conservative landslide, and her political career was launched.
The meshing of her public and private lives placed near schizoid demands on Thatcher. She had, and still has, two faces that are startlingly different: prim and tart-tongued in public, she is also a homebody who delights in comparing prices with other housewives in grocery stores near her comfortable house on Flood Street in the fashionable London district of Chelsea. Thatcher herself has said that "I'm a romantic at heart," and admits that "there are times when I get home at night, and everything has got on top of me, when I shed a few tears silently, alone."