Exit right: a great talker whose voice still echoed round the world stage

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Poor health forces Thatcher to quit public life

Exit right: a great talker whose voice still echoed round the world stage

Flirtatious, intimidating and adored

Family pressed her to slow down

Memorable Thatcherisms

Leading article: The deafening sound of silence from the back seat

In Baroness Thatcher's latest book, the one that propelled her on to the front pages earlier this week, there is a single attempt at self-mockery. In her assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev, she makes a passing reference to her own renowned loquacity. "He was a great talker – and that is a subject on which I am a good judge."

Yes, Lady Thatcher knew a good talker when she met one. As she implied, her public voice has rarely been silenced. Although she ceased to be Prime Minister more than 11 years ago, her voice has continued to mesmerise her party and parts of the national media, and could still command stages around the world.

Now we have a new book, Statecraft, that brings us the Thatcher voice with an eerie clarity, and yet there will be no actual voice to accompany it. The book is dedicated to Ronald Reagan – himself silenced by Alzheimer's – and is driven by an overwhelming awe for the US and a loathing for the European Union. The book raises hundreds of questions that she would have doubtless swatted away with an impatient tirade of words. In public, at least, there will be no more swatting away.

The incongruity of a silent Lady Thatcher will be especially incongruous to the Lady herself. Her latest book is full of references to recent lectures in Prague, Washington, New York and farther-flung places. She earned a fortune, but she did not need the money. The point about those lectures is that they were work of a sort – activity, audiences listening in awe, all the aspects of prime ministerial life that were suddenly cut away from her in November 1990.

That was the first time she fell silent in public, but it did not last very long. Although never the same again, physically ageing in a few months as she adapted to life away from power, she became re-energised by new forms of work. By all accounts, her office in Westminster has been a hive of activity for the past decade.

The memoirs were written, the lecture tours arranged, and extensive interviews offered on the back of those events. Partly, she was sustained by the adoration of audiences but also by a few close political acquaintances. Those who helped her with Statecraft included right-wing historians such as Andrew Roberts and her favourite novelist, Frederick Forsyth. Her friends say the arrival and departure of such figures added a sense of urgency, duplicating in a minor key the workaholic years in government and as leader of her party.

Not that she could ever quite let go of the Conservative Party. Nor could the Conservative Party ever quite let go of her.

John Major was driven demented by her interventions against the Maastricht treaty and other troublemaking comments, some of them in public. When he intervened during the last leadership contest to endorse Ken Clarke, he spent the entire interview attacking Lady Thatcher. There was, it seemed, no escaping from her even in a leadership contest held more than a decade after she left office.

Before his departure, William Hague used to phone her for advice most weekends. In the end, he pleaded with her to be a central feature of his election campaign. "The Mummy has returned", she joked at one public meeting. Mr Hague laughed nervously. Michael Portillo, in the same hall, could hardly raise a smile. He had just had a blazing row with Mr Hague about whether Lady Thatcher's latest comments on Europe should be publicly disowned.

Every election campaign, every leadership contest has been dominated by the voice of Thatcher, hectoring, self-confident and often electrifying, in marked contrast to the confused, hesitant voices trying to rebuild the Conservative Party. In the last leadership contest, she made the front pages again: Vote for Iain Duncan Smith, she declared. The party did what she said, as it did when she came out in favour of Mr Hague four years earlier.

For Lady Thatcher, it is almost impossible to imagine what can replace this relentless activity. The appetite is still there. We know that from the cancelled speaking engagements associated with the publication of the new book. There were more than 30, arranged in different countries. We see the appetite for political activity from the book itself.

Although Statecraft is billed as her final book, the words do not read like a retreat from public life. On the contrary, they read like a manifesto for years to come, in which she would admonish those of us who take a different view about Europe in particular. Here is one immediate repercussion: If Tony Blair calls a euro referendum campaign, Lady Thatcher will play no part. That is not necessarily good news for Mr Blair. The great election winner of the 1980s is arguably a vote loser nowadays.

That is why the response of leading Conservatives to yesterday's news will be painfully ambiguous. Of course, there will be genuine sympathy on a personal level. Lady Thatcher was the heroine for Mr Duncan Smith and most of those around him. But politics is a brutal business. There will be a part of the new leadership that will feel liberated now the Mummy has been silenced.

Even her recent interventions have meant trouble for the party. Only this week, the serialisation of her book in one newspaper produced a nervy silence from the leadership. They have read enough opinion polls to know that most voters see them as verging on the insane in their obsession about Europe. Mr Duncan Smith's solution has been to be more or less silent on the issue. Lady Thatcher's book showed that she had no intention of being silent. Now her medical condition has forced her to adopt the same approach as Mr Duncan Smith.

But she has hovered over the party in a more destructive way than merely focusing on Europe. During the last Parliament, Mr Hague's close aide Alan Duncan told me candidly: "We have a huge problem. We are still searching for an encore to Mrs Thatcher and we have not found one."

Mr Duncan was only half-right. While she was so politically active, his party did not dare to search very far. John Major tried a change of gear with his Citizen's Charter and his attempts to be at "the heart of Europe". Lady Thatcher raised her finger from the sidelines and Mr Major went running back to the right of his party like a frightened schoolboy. He berated Europe and privatised the railways, partly to prove to the right that he could out-Thatcher Thatcher.

Mr Hague began his leadership by moving to the centre ground, but soon felt the ire of Lady Thatcher and spent the last election "saving the pound" with her by his side.

In this sense, Mr Duncan Smith, a purer Thatcherite than Mr Major or Mr Hague, is the lucky one. In Harrogate at his party conference this weekend, Mr Duncan Smith is attempting to make a break with the past, to appear more modern. The symbolism is cruel but potentially significant. Lady Thatcher takes a bow from public life as the Conservatives make another attempt to present themselves as a party no longer gripped by its past.