Margaret Thatcher's daughter has written a book which is causing sometalk on this side of the pond about whether she should have been as open about her mothers decline.
Margaret Thatcher is now 82 and her daughter describes how she can no longer rememeber where she lives or the fact her husband is dead.
She talks of how she has been in declineing health for a decade and has sufferred from dementia at least since she was 75.
Margaret Thatcher's mental decline revealed by her daughter
Lady Thatcher, one of the most commanding figures of the 20th Century, struggles to finish sentences, does not know where she lives and even forgets that her husband Denis is dead.
In a memoir to be published next month, Carol Thatcher paints a picture of "the new Lady T," a much-diminished figure created by the progressive effects of dementia and a series of minor strokes.
Lady Thatcher, now 82, first started to show signs of mental deterioration almost a decade ago, her daughter recalls.
Margaret Thatcher was one of the most powerful figures of her age, but that age ended in 1990, I remember being shocked on being advised not to talk of the terrors of Thatcher to first time voters in 1997 as even then they would not know who she was, or at least would not actually be politically aware of her themselves, (they would have been 9-10 when she resigned).
In her book, Miss Thatcher wrote how her mother confused Bosnia and the Falklands during a conversation about the war in the former Yugoslavia.
She wrote: "I almost fell off my chair. Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it. She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100% cast-iron damage-proof."
Miss Thatcher describes the gradual decline in her mother's faculties, leaving her a shadow of her formidable earlier self.
Perhaps most poignant is Miss Thatcher's revelation that her mother often forgets the death of Sir Denis. He died of cancer in 2003.
"Losing Dad ... was truly awful for Mum, not least because her dementia meant she kept forgetting he was dead," Miss Thatcher writes.
"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again.
McCain is not asking for support to carry on a couple of more years in a job he is already doing, like some Seneate colleagues, he is applying for potentially an 8 year term ("a one term limit would have me as a lame duck on day 1") for one of the most difficult jobs in the world.
In terms of age it would be as if Thatcher was applying for the job for the first time in 1998, when she would have been 72.
Whatever my disagreements with McBush I hope he does stay healthy and mixing up Shia and Sunni, Iraq and Iran etc etc are not the first signs of something more serious but do you want to risk it America, do you want to risk it!