ATTEMPTS by her press secretary to soften Thatcher’s vicious and unfeeling image somewhat predictably failed when she appeared incapable of displaying a more caring side, according to newly released documents.

In a carefully worded memo written in 1985 to the prime minister, chief press secretary Bernard Ingham set out her “natural assets” against her “weaknesses.”

With a fair degree of understatement, it states that by her second term she was seen as “hectoring, strident and bossy.”

Ingham praised her as a “decisive, strong-minded person” and “someone who is clearly going to be very hard to beat.”

He then pointed out that the government would benefit from a fall in unemployment, and that Thatcher was seen to possess “a more general insensitivity: a belief that you do not care for people — all of this linked with so-called ‘cuts’.”

Followed by: “A hectoring, strident, bossy, dictatorial personality (which does not survive an encounter with you).”

The five-page memo was published in the latest release of Thatcher’s personal files.