I have to say, I think truth comes first, but again, it's all relative. Some might consider Thatcher to be on the level of Stalin or Hitler (support for oppressive regimes which might have equated to either of those being an argument to that effect) and so therefore why not say what one thinks? A public figure has to be open to criticism, or where is personal freedom to be found? Sentimentality shouldn't prevent it - after all, they at least are dead and don't have to hear it! And really, most public figures, and their friends and families, have heard as bad or worse during their lifetime, or I would jolly well hope so. The well-made point above re Stalin is that it may take some time for a person's foibles to come to light, particularly if they were trying to hide them. So in that case, it will be after death if at all.

Personally, I loathe the mawkish twaddle which is spouted on the death of a public fgure. I feel exactly the opposite way, that their lives are retrospectively whitewashed and often the comments which would have been made, ought to have been made, are not, because of all those 'conventions' surrounding death. As has already been said re: George Best, he was no angel, but on talk shows and in papers, there was little but praise for "football's first star". What is needed, perhaps, is calm, honest reporting somewhere in the middle, neither lionising nor demonising.

If only people's unpleasant policies could die with them, but "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones". Unfortunately.