Let me begin by saying that this is not a defence of Margaret Thatcher’s political or economic policies. Whatever your opinion on Thatcher’s politics, there is one thing everyone should recognise: as an historical figure, Margaret Thatcher is underrated.

Nearly a third of a century has passed since this country – in considerable advance of the rest of the Western world – elected its first female leader. And yet, while Thatcher is frequently cited in the media (the past three years have seen the release of two BBC biopics and numerous documentaries about her), she has yet to be taken seriously by more than a handful of academic historians. As a student of history, I cannot help but be embarrassed.

Thatcher has immense potential as an historical character. She spoke her mind – often, of course, so forcefully that she blocked out the opinions of others – and she was always honest: when she believed in something, she said so, and she did not turn back even when the stakes were high. You might not agree with the causes she stood for, and you might not even respect her obstinacy. But surely we can all recognise that, as a character trait, her force of personality should be tremendously compelling to the historian. It is something that very few modern world leaders possess.

If nothing else, talented historians should be fascinated by the paradoxes that frame her persona. She was lower-middle-class, the daughter of a grocer, and yet she became Tory Leader. She claimed not to notice that she was a woman (‘I regard myself as Prime Minister’, she told the Mirror), yet she is described by many who knew her as eminently feminine. She was notorious for her lack of a sense of humour, but she told Monty Python’s dead parrot joke at the Tory Conference in 1990. (Look it up on YouTube - it has to be seen to be believed.) How can historians resist her?

Hers is a character on a grand, almost Tudor scale; indeed, she managed her staff at Downing Street as if she were the leader of an early modern European court. Many historians are doubtless put off writing about her because of a personal distaste for her politics. But new books about Hitler and Stalin are out nearly every year; surely the biographers of these men are not sympathetic to their subjects. Why is it that Thatcher is not treated with the same attention? Amongst other things, she is the only one of the three not to have been accused of genocide.

Those historians who refuse to take on the vast subject of Thatcher’s character and its place in our past reveal nothing but a failure of imagination. Thatcher is already a cultural icon, her likeness surfacing over the past several decades in everything from Tatler’s Vivienne Westwood cover shoot (1989) to last week’s episode of ‘Ashes to Ashes’. Like her or not, we owe it to our sense of history to recognise that, as an historical character, she is simply larger than life.