This week’s dramatisation of the fall of Margaret Thatcher shows her as a more human figure than often supposed. As the Iron Lady is re-evaluated on TV, we asked some of those who were prominent in the 1980s how they regard her now.

Sir Max Hastings Editor of The Daily Telegraph in the late 1980s

She regenerated the capitalist system in Britain and was right to privatise large areas of state ownership, but failed to reform such vital sectors as education and health which could not be delegated to private management. After a decade in power she had exhausted her energy, ideas and credibility, and governed increasingly erratically. I was much relieved that, after I was obliged to sack her daughter during a round of bracing Thatcherite redundancies, she never spoke to me again.

Sir John Tusa Managing director of the BBC World Service, 1986-92

Her most significant acts were fighting for the recovery of the Falklands and recognising that she could “do business” with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. She was wrong to say and believe that “there is no such thing as society”, undermining the essential bond that connects a humane society – shared responsibility for one another. She began the coarsening and degrading of local and national community...