ABSTRACT
For a fleeting period, the Cold War seemed to be, almost as much as the Falklands episode, Margaret Thatcher’s war. Certainly, she was the dominating British presence in the last decade of the Cold War and there are those, none more assertively, than Thatcher herself, who profess to her crucial role in bringing that conflict to an end.1 Before examining that claim or the wider question of Thatcher’s attitude to the Cold War, it would be profitable briefly to examine her inheritance in terms of Britain’s conduct of the Cold War; first, generally from 1945 and then, more specifically, during the 1970s, the decade preceding her accession to power.
