The British embassy in Rome has announced that there will be a book available for those wishing to express their condolences for Margaret Thatcher who died from a stroke on 8 April at the Ritz Hotel in London.

The book will be available from 10 April at Via XX Settembre 80/A from 09.00 to 17.00 for three to four days.

Thatcher, leader of the Conservative party from 1975 and British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for many years. She had been living in an apartment in the Ritz Hotel since she was discharged from hospital at the end of 2012.

Thatcher was Britain’s first woman prime minister. The Iron Lady, as she was often called, was best known for her fierce battles to break the power of the trade unions in the United Kingdom, the return of laissez-faire, or deregulated, capitalism during her time in office and the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982.

Her ceremonial funeral with military honours is on 17 April at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. It will be attended by both the Queen and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh.

David Cameron, the present British prime minister, has cancelled important meetings with heads of government in Spain, France and Germany this week, and both houses of the British parliament have been recalled from the Easter recess to meet on 10 April to debate Thatcher’s still controversial political legacy.