Myths are all very well and are often too embedded in our culture to shift, but, in the case of Florence Nightingale, what we most need now is a strong dose of historical reality. And recent history can play its part in helping us to understand the more distant past. In the back of my mind, while I was writing my biography of Nightingale, was sometimes the figure of Margaret Thatcher, helping me to understand the vicissitudes of a woman operating in a man's world. The Lady with the Lamp would have abhorred much about the Iron Lady's politics, but she would certainly have recognised aspects of its style as akin to her own. So did Mrs Thatcher. In 1989, on a visit to Turkey, Britain's first woman Prime Minister laid a wreath in the British Crimean War cemetery at Scutari. Afterwards, she spoke about one of the "great figures of history", who "had had an idea, who knew what she wanted to do and wasn't going to be put off by anyone." She was referring to Florence Nightingale, but it's tempting to believe that she was really talking about herself.