She may be only 20 years old, but Baroness Thatcher's granddaughter captivated mourners yesterday as she delivered a flawless reading at the former prime minister's funeral.
Amanda Thatcher, a US college student, appeared unfazed as she gave a lesson from Ephesians which called on the righteous to "put on the whole armour of God". Her deeply felt delivery put her firmly on the world stage before a global television audience of millions.
She later told an MP that she had not felt nervous, adding: "It's sort of in the blood." The other lesson was read by David Cameron, the Prime Minister.
Mourners including Boris Johnson and Sir Malcolm Rifkind were unanimous in their praise of Thatcher afterwards. "I thought she read absolutely beautifully and she has that attractive mid-Atlantic accent," said Dame Mary Archer, the wife of Lord Archer, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman. "She was splendid."
Thatcher and her brother, Michael, 24, are the children of Sir Mark Thatcher and his first wife, Diane Beckett.
They live with their mother in Dallas, Texas, where, according to her high school reports, Thatcher is a talented sportswoman who excels in athletics and was voted "most likely to change the world" by her peers.
She and her brother are dedicated evangelical Christians, and were Baroness Thatcher's "greatest delight" in later life. They sat in the front row of St Paul's between their father and stepmother.
Before the service, they preceded Lady Thatcher's coffin into the cathedral, carrying cushions bearing the insignias of the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit. Wearing a black coat and dress, a wide-brimmed hat and pearls, Thatcher then read from Ephesians 6: 10-18. The passage calls on Christians to stand against the "wiles of the devil": "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
A family friend said: "She and her brother are both committed Christians and it gives them an inner confidence. They know they believe."
Lady Thatcher adored her grandchildren, telling an interviewer in the late 1990s: "When my daughter-in-law sends me photographs of the grandchildren, apart from seeing them in the flesh, that is the greatest pleasure I have in the whole year, far exceeding everything else."
Michael, an accomplished American football player at high school, studied at Texas A?&?M University, and has recently worked for a Republican-aligned political organisation that aims to "educate and empower the Hispanic community with conservative values".
The siblings were born in America but spent much of their childhood in South Africa. They lived in a large house in Cape Town, where Michael played cricket and Amanda had riding lessons.
But after Sir Mark was arrested in 2004 for involvement in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, his wife moved back to Dallas with the children. The couple later divorced and both remarried.
The move, however, cut the children off from their father, who was barred from the US because of a conviction over the coup.
The 12-year-old Amanda reportedly wrote to President George W Bush asking him to intervene. "You know how you feel about your daughters," she asked. "I want my daddy back in America." She did not receive a reply.
By last night hundreds of people on Twitter, the social media website, had praised her "captivating" and "pitch perfect" reading. Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP for Ribble Valley, said: "If she had been speaking at just a family funeral people can break down and cry but her composure was perfect."
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