There is only one British prime minister whose portrayals on screen have variously been described as “flirtatious and coquettish”, “almost a glamour puss”, “a she-wolf” and as a “figure of awe for her personal strength and grit”.

Margaret Thatcher is returning to British television screens, and this time she will be played by the X-Files actress Gillian Anderson, who is swapping her FBI badge for a handbag in the fourth series of the blockbuster Netflix series The Crown.

Anderson, 50, is following in the footsteps of Meryl Streep, Greta Scacchi, Andrea Riseborough and a Spitting Image puppet voiced by a man as the latest incarnation of the Iron Lady, whose tearful departure from Downing Street in 1990 will provide a suitably emotional climax to the