Before Thatcher's visit to Iran in 1978, the then foreign secretary David Owen sent a note to the hosts:"Mrs Thatcher has asked if you could arrange for a good local hairdresser before your dinner on 29 April. The hairdresser should bring Carmen rollers."
The files released by National Archives reveal that Thatcher was a politician obsessed with publicity even before she entered Downing Street.
In the files, Thatcher, then leader of the opposition Conservative Party, is shown battling for a more public role in celebrations to mark 50 years since women got the vote in secret files only just made public.
The then prime Minister James Callaghan initially wanted to stop Thatcher speaking alongside him at the opening of an exhibition to mark the date in July 1978. But he was warned against this and told the Conservatives would use it to gain political capital.
"I am sure Mrs. Thatcher's public appearances do as much harm to her party as yours do good to ours," event organiser Lady Alma Birk, a government minister, told Callaghan in a May 1978 letter."If you appear together, the contrast between your reassuring authority and her shrillness would be striking."
Another revelation was about efforts to ensure that Thatcher was not allowed in to sit with Queen Elizabeth II's sister, Princess Margaret, in the royal box at a gala theatre show.
In a briefing note to Callaghan the same month, his principal private secretary Ken Stowe warned Thatcher was going to get"a fair amount of the limelight" as Britain's most famous female politician.
But this could be mitigated by keeping her out of the royal box, Stowe indicated."I think with a mixture of sweet reasonableness and low cunning, we should be able to fix it," he added.
Another official noted on a separate document:"PM says Mrs. T on no account to get into royal box." Thatcher eventually met the queen's sister in an ante-room.
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