Mark Serwotka

General secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union

Being the head of the civil service is a difficult job and you probably have to take your friends where you can find them. It is disappointing then that Bob Kerslake seems determined to make enemies of the 450,000 civil servants who work for him.

Paul Flynn

Member of Parliament, Newport West

Many sections of the media have been awash with extravagant praise since her death: some justified; most wild exaggerations. The Tories have tried to milk the Thatcher legacy to halt their present collapsing poll ratings.

Chris Dreyfus

Leadership Development Consultant

Death is a time to celebrate and give thanks for a life lived. No one can deny that Margaret Thatcher lived her life with passion and purpose. She has provided a strong role model for, not just Conservative values, but values which are universal if we are to build a society which encourages people to achieve their full potential.

Tim Whitmarsh

Professor of Ancient Literatures at Oxford University, writer (private views)

The one Thatcher fact that all of the media have agreed on is that she was a 'divisive' figure. It doesn't take Pulitzer prize-winning journalism to work that one out, you might think, especially after the last week. But it's more than a statement of the obvious: in the hands of the right, it's quickly become part of the new mythology.

Clive Botting

Academic, art collector and lover of world cinema

Press coverage and debate leading up to the funeral of Baroness Thatcher led me to reflect on a recent journey through Vietnam. When you travel you can't help but compare. I spent many hours talking with Vietnamese from all walks of life and quickly realised that in this emerging nation is a pride and strength in being Vietnamese.

Nash Riggins

American journalism student and politics geek based in Scotland

This week, Scotland's lawmakers are sitting down to stage a debate on the legacy of Britain's first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher - carving yet another notch into the Scottish Parliament's already prolific belt that celebrates the body's obsession with utterly pointless parliamentary procedure.

Soraya Kishtwari

Writer and freelance journalist

We're on the 14:06 train Brighton-bound. Outside the sky is a pallid shade of grey and a handful of snowflakes begin to float down. Spring is nowhere to be seen.

Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway is an author and commentator

This week, everyone believes in the hero theory of history. There are no great or pivotal moments, only great people moving the inert masses by force of personality.

David Trumble

Award-winning artist, cartoonist and illustrator

I saw not the frail, fallible woman, but the indelible, subjectively interpreted icon that cannot be so easily extricated from the world. The symbol cannot be destroyed.

James Ruddick

Author and broadcaster

The tributes to Margaret Thatcher have her endlessly depicted her as a conviction politician - but history will find the reality less consistent, more complex. Those who bother to drill down into the myth soon realise that she was as mutable and movable as any other politician, too often an empty vessel waiting to be told what to do and think, and always prepared to pretend the opposite of what she believed if it would get her to where she needed to go.

John Bunzl

Businessman with a simple and powerful new vision for global governance

"Divisive" is the word that perhaps most accurately characterises reflections on the recent passing of Baroness Thatcher. But paradoxically, as David Cameron pointed out today, the day of Mrs. Thatcher's funeral, "we are all Thatcherites now".

Frank Mannion

Award-winning Irish movie producer and distributor

Even if Thatcher did not seem to understand the importance of cinema in British society, she certainly inspired a new breed of film directors - Ken Loach, Stephen Frears, Peter Greenaway, Neil Jordan and Mike Leigh created some of their best work in the eighties. Looking back now, it could be argued that the Thatcher period was the golden age of British film.

Esther Freeman

Ethical fashion campaigner, editor of Ms Wanda's Wardrobe

If you want to take a stand against Thatcher then take a stand against what she created. Today we launched The 1% Campaign, demanding fashion brands invest more time and money in solving the problems in their supply chain. We're asking for a minimum of 1% of their profits.

Stefan Simanowitz

Journalist; Writer; Broadcaster; and Human Rights Campaigner

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Francis Hoar

Barrister, writes on law reform and blogs on politics

Mrs Thatcher had immense achievements: bringing harmony to industrial relations (reducing tenfold the number of days lost to strikes), liberating the Falklands, rejuvenating and modernising our manufacturing sector (and increasing its output), controlling inflation, almost halving unemployment in her time in office and, most significantly of all, preparing the way for the final decline and defeat of Soviet tyranny.

Ben Walters

Cabaret editor of Time Out London and producer of BURN: Moving Images by Cabaret Artists.

Last Wednesday, a grotesque large-scale picture of Margaret Thatcher appeared. Coloured purple with blank eyes, skulls for earrings and a thread of drool leaking from the mouth, it stood three metres tall against a background of flames. Next to it, in huge, carefully scripted letters, were the words "ROT IN HELL!! MAGGIE".