Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is to have an operation on her upper arm after breaking it in a fall last week, her spokesman said on Thursday. The 83-year-old Conservative politician, known as the “Iron Lady” during her 11 years in power, will stay in London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for at least several more days after the operation, which is scheduled for Friday, her private secretary Mark Worthington said. Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister and known as one of the world's most formidable political minds, was taken to hospital on June 12 after she broke her arm in a fall at her London home. Her son, Mark, told reporters outside the hospital in Thursday that she was “very well” and Worthington said she was in good spirits. Thatcher has had intermittent health scares since she was forced from power in 1990. She suffered a series of mild strokes in late 2001 and 2002 and cancelled several engagements a few months later due to an undisclosed illness. Thatcher's daughter Carol revealed in 2008 that her mother had been suffering from dementia for several years and often struggled to remember things - including that her husband Denis had died in 2003.
