IN 1975, grocer’s daughter Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead a major UK political party.

Four years later, she became our first female prime minister, holding office for three consecutive terms.

She united and divided the country, smashing through gender and class barriers to be heard above the patriarchal hubbub in Westminster.

This film paints a sketchy portrait of Thatcher as she looks back over her life.

It would be impossible to shoehorn a lifetime of political tug-of-war into 104 minutes of screen time.

Instead, scriptwriter Abi Morgan conceives a poignant tribute that revisits key moments in flashback, seen through the eyes of an increasingly frail 80-something woman fighting against the rising tide of fractured memories.

Baroness Thatcher (Meryl Streep) juggles a busy social diary with the help of assistants and her daughter Carol (Olivia Colman).

She hosts dinner parties where she voices her views on the current government (“I don’t like coalitions, never have”) and David Cameron (“Clever man, quite a smoothie!”) but is disparaging about the state of Westminster since her departure: “It used to be about trying to do something, now it’s about trying to be someone.”

Comforted by the ghost of her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), Thatcher allows her mind to wander back to the 1984 IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference, the Falklands war and her downfall precipitated by the humiliation of Geoffrey Howe (Anthony Head) in front of fellow Cabinet ministers.

The film is dominated by Streep’s tour de force portrayal of Thatcher.

As a full, unexpurgated history lesson, it is found wanting and great swathes of Thatcher’s premiership are glossed over.

However, as a portrait of a lady in her twilight years, the film moves, providing us with fleeting insights to a figure who still divides opinion as much today as she did during her reign at 10 Downing Street.