The fall of the Iron Curtain: The Cold War was still in deep freeze in 1979 with most of eastern Europe living under totalitarian communism. Lady Thatcher was there to claim victory for capitalism when Glasnost started the thaw.

The rise and fall of alternative comedy: Without "Thatch" Ben Elton and his fellow comics might have had to resort to mother-in-law jokes. Some critics have accused yesterday's young rebels of becoming the post-Comic Relief establishment.

The rise and rise of soap operas: EastEnders, Brookside, Neighbours and countless others like the costly flop El Dorado, joined old favourites like Coronation Street, to fill TV schedules, front pages and pop charts.

Weddings of the Windsors: In 1979 only one of the Queen's four children was married. This year the only one who has not been divorced is finally preparing to walk down the aisle.

Race and society: In 1979, the National Front was the third party in some constituencies. Its closest equivalent today, the British National Party, is mostly seen as an electoral irrelevance. The increase in the number of black MPs is another public manifestation of the increasingly multi-cultural nature of British society.

Large-scale race riots are a thing of the past. However, racist violence has never gone away although attitudes towards it have changed.

Murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence has become a national icon. And the Metropolitan Police has promised to mend its ways after being accused of "institutional racism" over its bungled handling of the case. There are also fears that the recent London bomb attacks are only the start of a neo-Nazi terror campaign.

TV and radio: Twenty years ago there was no satellite, cable or digital TV and almost no commercial radio.

Viewers had a choice of three terrestrial channels, none of which ever broadcast much past midnight. Video recorders were the size of a small suitcase and were only beginning to become a familiar presence in British homes. VHS had yet to triumph over Betamax in the format wars.

Devolution: In 1979 voters in Wales and Scotland rejected the offer of devolution.

Two decades on they are going to the polls to choose who will sit in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

Trade unions: The Conservatives came to power months after the end of the Winter of Discontent when scores of services were hit by strikes. Lady Thatcher's determination to smash the power of the unions led to reforms such as ban on secondary picketing.

The new laws combined with high unemployment and several high profile union defeats, such as the miners' strike, saw union membership slump from 13.2m in 1979 to 7.1m in 1997.

Shares for all: Lady Thatcher wanted to make popular capitalism a reality by transforming the UK into a share-owning democracy. She set about achieving this by offering incentives to encourage the public to invest in numerous public utility privatisations - which were likened to selling off the family silver by former the Tory Prime Minister, the Earl of Stockton.

Although many people sold on their discounted shares to large institutions for an instant profit for some the habit did stick.

The "Big Bang" deregulation of the stock market also contributed to the number of shareholders more than quadrupling from 3m in 1979 to 12.35m in 1998.

A game of two halves: Football in the 1980s was plagued by the disease of English soccer hooliganism. Clubs were banned from European competition for several years after 39 people died in the 1989 Heysel Stadium disaster.

It was a sport largely for working class supporters who the government wanted to issue identity cards to. However, in the post-Fever Pitch era it became almost compulsory for MPs and Cabinet ministers to drone on about their favourite team.

The sport was transformed by big money as players' wages went through the roof. Top clubs were floated on the stock market and satellite TV snapped up the rights to the Premier league, formerly the First Division.

The Channel Tunnel: Although many Europhiles regard Lady Thatcher as the ultimate little Englander it was her government's support that made this age-old pipedream a reality, ending the UK mainland's island status.

Third parties: The "Gang of Four" quit Labour in 1981 to found the Social Democratic Party in protest at the perceived leftward drift of their former comrades.

The SDP teamed up with the Liberal Party to form a partnership known as the Alliance. In 1988 the two parties voted to become one after acrimonious merger votes. The new party, the Social and Liberal Democrats, was renamed the Liberal Democrats the next year. After spending years of being satirised as political fence-sitters the Lib Dems are now widely regarded as being to the left of Labour on many issues.

The almost-an-acronym people: It started with the yuppie (young urban professional). Buppie, nimby and dinky and others soon followed. These shorthand categorisations were principally invented by trendspotters in the 1980s to identify a perceived new sub-species of contemporary society.

Many of these terms won the ultimate validation for any invented word: a place in a dictionary.

An Englishman's castle: Under right to buy millions of council tenants bought their homes at a discount. Councils complained they were not allowed to spend the proceeds to cover the massive depletion the social housing stock - a task given to housing associations.

The dream of owner occupancy turned sour with recession, repossession and negative equity. Benefit cuts, changes in care provision, growing housing waiting lists and the breakdown of families helped make homeless rough-sleepers a symbol of the times.

Green consciousness: Apocalyptic warnings about global-warming inspired a popular environmental awareness which peaked politically when the Green Party won 15% of the vote at the 1989 general election.

Green consumer power, which helped sweep ozone-unfriendly aerosols of the shelves and made the Body Shop a success, remains a force to be reckoned with.

Most recently it has pressured supermarkets to ban genetically-modified food.

The 1990s has also seen eco-warriors become modern folk heroes for taking direct action against new road schemes.

Big Small Business: The Tories' desire to nurture entrepreneurial talent led them to encourage the creation of more small businesses in the 1980s as old heavy industries died and new opportunities sprouted in the service sector.

Although many small firms were culled by recession their numbers grew from 1.79m in 1979 to 12.35m last year.

Webwise and mobile: The Sinclair ZX81 was the height of sophistication in home computers in the early Thatcher years. Today plans are afoot to give every child their own e-mail address. In 1979 nobody ever started a telephone call with "I'm on the bus." Now there are about 14.5m mobiles in the UK.

Labour: After losing four elections on the trot some Labour MPs despaired of ever riding in a ministerial limousine.

But the party's fortunes improved dramatically as Tony Blair tilted it further to the right after 1994. As a result many parts of the press which had been doggedly loyal to Lady Thatcher turned on her successors at the Tory helm with the same vehemence previously reserved for the "loony left".

Special relationship: From Maggie and Ronnie to Tony and Bill. Though the faces have changed the friendships between UK and US leaders have remained close.