As tributes mark 100 years since Margaret Thatcher’s birth, it’s time to look beyond the mythologies — both saintly and sinister — and reckon with the complex legacy of a leader who shaped Britain, divided Scotland, and left behind lessons still relevant today says Herald columnist Brian Wilson.

The memory of Margaret Thatcher has long been consigned to mythology. To some she remains a guiding angel who could do no wrong. The alternative version portrays a demon, bent on destruction of everything worthwhile in British, and particularly, Scottish society. There is little room left for nuance.

One of the problems with the latter approach is that it exonerates everyone else from responsibility and what isn’t remembered cannot be learned from. In Mrs Thatcher’s favour, she made little secret about her agenda. Those who facilitated her rise and then perpetuated it while posing as her arch-opponents were either knaves or fools.

I cannot compete with the “Thatcher I knew” accounts which have proliferated to mark her centenary but one encounter lives in the memory. It was in 2001 and I was heading for Kuwait to represent HM Government at the 10th anniversary celebrations of its liberation from invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I had been told Baroness Thatcher would be on the same plane.

My intention to have a word in mid-flight was pre-empted when I heard a sepulchral voice at my shoulder. “Mr Wilson, my name is Margaret Thatcher. I think we’re going to the same place”. I concurred. “We’ve got to stand by them” (i.e. the Kuwaitis). Again, it was easy to assent. Then, with feeling: “We should have finished the job”. In other words, the time to deal with Saddam Hussein was in 1991 when his aggressive intent was........

© Herald Scotland