Denis Thatcher 1979 general election to become the first female Prime Minister in British history. Denis Thatcher became the first husband of a British Prime Minister. In 1953, they had twin children (Carol and Mark), who were born on 15 August, seven weeks premature. Thatcher was watching the 1953 Ashes series at the time of the birth. Not long after the 1964 general election, Denis Thatcher suffered a nervous breakdown which put a severe strain on their marriage. The breakdown was probably caused by the increasing pressure of running the family business, caring for his relatives, and his wife's preoccupation with her
Margaret Thatcher past 70 years. Despite a relatively poor average poll rating as Prime Minister, Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, she is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public. She was voted the fourth-greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI. According to theatre critic Michael Billington, Thatcher left an "emphatic mark" on the arts while Prime Minister. One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved satirist John Wells (as writer and performer), actress Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future