When Margaret Thatcher is in a room with three of her cabinet members and two others discussing the economy and budget cuts, the door behind them is alternately open and closed between shots.
(at around 1h) During the protests, there numerous events and news reports shown out of sequence. In the order they are included in the film:
- Protest banners showing the year as 1983.
- The Harrods bombing of 17 December 1983.
- The Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings of 20 July 1982.
- Margaret Thatcher giving her "and now it must be business as usual" speech at the Conservative Party Conference on 12 October 1984, given after the Brighton Hotel bombing earlier that day.
- The Brighton Hotel bombing.
After the dinner party, when Margaret Thatcher speaks to her daughter, her pearl necklace is above her dress. It's hidden under the dress in the following closeup, only to reappear in the next shot.
When Airey Neave was assassinated by an INLA car bomb, Margaret Thatcher was nowhere near the Palace of Westminster.
In the film, Labour leader Michael Foot opposes the decision to send a task force to the Falkland Islands, and Margaret Thatcher admonishes him in the House of Commons following Britain's victory over Argentina. Charles Moore's authorized biography of Thatcher clearly states that Foot supported her on the Falklands, and she emerged from the conflict with renewed personal admiration for him, despite their profound disagreements on most political issues.
One shot shows Margaret Thatcher wearing a hat in the House of Commons during her tenure as Prime Minister. She never did that; the practice is discouraged for Members of Parliament.
"Norma", the opera that Margaret and Denis watch in the theater and whose aria "Casta Diva" is widely used in the movie score, was composed by Vincenzo Bellini, not Francesco Bellini as the framed booklet says.
In the Cabinet during the power cut, Margaret Thatcher says that the leader of the miners had called for the army to revolt. This actually had been said by Mick McGahey, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers. The leader, Joe Gormley, was a much more moderate figure.
On several occasions, when Margaret Thatcher is speaking in the House of Commons, the camera pans the house and no other female MPs are shown. The House of Commons had 19 female MPs in 1979, when Thatcher became Prime Minister, and 66 in 1992, just after she retired. In an article in the Daily Mail, dated January 9, 2011, director Phyllida Lloyd said, "I've deliberately put no other women in the shots. There were, in fact, 19 female MPs by the time she became Prime Minister, but we are trying to show not how it was to the objective eye but how it felt from her point of view. Ours is a collection of very selective memories, of a life of a woman formed by the Second World War and permanently at war, her life played out as a series of battles."
Rite Aid bandages were not sold in the UK in the 1980s. However, Margaret Thatcher traveled to the US frequently and could have brought some back with her.
In the scenes in Parliament, Members address one another directly. In the British Parliament, all Members must address the Speaker of the House and are forbidden from addressing other directly.
Airey Neave was assassinated by a car bomb in 1979. In the movie, he drives a 1981 Vauxhall Cavalier.
Margaret Thatcher and Denis Thatcher are at a performance of Norma at Covent Garden in London. The date on the program is 1950, and Maria Callas plays Norma. Callas did not debut in London until 1952, and the recording of Callas used in the film was recorded in 1954.
There is an advertisement for an iPad on the newspaper that covered the Islamabad Marriott Hotel Bombing, which occurred in 2008. The iPad was not released until 2010.
When MP Airey Neave is in the parking garage (car park), a CCTV camera from at least 2001 is briefly visible just before his car explodes. Neave was assassinated in 1979.
One shot, set in the 1980s, shows the Houses of Parliament as seen from Westminster Bridge. To the right, a National Express coach on Westminster Bridge has 'high level' brake lights; these first appeared on buses in the late 1990s. Also, a 2011 livery can be seen.
At the end, when Margaret Thatcher walks down the stairs of Number 10 Downing Street, a lighting rig is visible on the landing above her.
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