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Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's papers have been donated to the nation in place of 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) in inheritance tax.

The documents include a previously unpublished 17,000-word memoir of the Falklands War written in 1983, a year after the conflict.

Arts Council England said it was "probably the single most significant historical document Margaret Thatcher ever wrote."

The council said Thursday it had accepted the papers in lieu of tax from the estate of Thatcher, who died in 2013 aged 87.

The papers will go to Cambridge University's Churchill Archives Centre.

Thatcher, whose free-market policies transformed 1980s Britain, remains a divisive politician.

Arts Council chairman Peter Bazalgette said that "whatever our politics," she was "a major historical figure" whose papers would now be available to scholars.