"His family were with him at his bedside when he died," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A tall, well-dressed and wealthy man who was always a step behind his famous wife during her years in power from 1979 to 1990, Thatcher learned to turn the self-effacing remark into a high art. He once described himself as the most "shadowy husband of all time."
Lady Thatcher, 77, suffered a series of small strokes last year that forced her to give up most public speaking engagements.
Before that, she cited her husband's poor health in turning down an invitation to visit the Falkland Islands to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina.
"A great deal will have been lost in her life," said Sir Bernard Ingham, who was Margaret Thatcher's spokesman when she was in power.
"She's not all that well in herself in terms of loss of memory. Therefore, I don't think she's going to find it easy to recover," Ingham told Sky News TV.
At the age of 80, Denis Thatcher looked back on his marriage and mused, "All I could produce, small as it may be, was love and loyalty."
But he was much more -- a sort of national institution in his own right.
To satirists he was an amiable, boozy old buffer, golf-mad and hen-pecked, always trying to sneak off for a "tincture" with chums, and airing vigorously right-wing views.
To his wife, he was the bedrock; the wealthy provider of nannies and expensive boarding schools for their two children; and the love story that made the rest possible.
"I think people adore him -- and I do, too," she once said.
Thatcher was 64 and a retired oil executive when his wife led Britain's Conservative Party to victory and became Europe's first female prime minister in May 1979.
He remained by her side through two more national elections, the 1982 Falkland Islands War, a 1984 assassination attempt and extensive foreign travel.
He chatted with the wives of other leaders at summit meetings, and was pushed around, often unrecognized, by crowds mobbing his wife on walking tours from Moscow to English regional cities.
He was still there, waving briskly beside his tearful spouse, as they left the prime minister's No. 10 Downing St. residence in November 1990 after she was ousted in a party revolt.
A month later he was made a hereditary baronet.
"Years ago, if anyone had said to me `You'll be doing all this,' I'd have told them, `You've got to be out of your mind,"' he said in 1985.
Why did he do it? "God gives you a job. Get out and do it."
His image came partly from a satirical magazine, Private Eye, which ran spoof letters from Denis Thatcher to a golfing pal, Bill Deedes, now Lord Deedes, former editor of London's Daily Telegraph.
The "Dear Bill" letters were scattered with complaints about "pinkos" at the British Broadcasting Corp., the tedium of another visit with "old Hopalong" (President Reagan) and reproofs from "The Boss."
The letters hit some chords.
"There's a lot of Dad in Private Eye," daughter Carol Thatcher once remarked.
John Whittingdale, formerly the prime minister's political secretary, said the Private Eye character "was an awful long way from the real Denis Thatcher, who was an immensely successful businessman and a very sharp operator.
"But he didn't resent the fact that he was portrayed in this way, and occasionally played up to it," Whittingdale said.
Once, when asked the secret of his trim figure, Thatcher said: "gin and cigarettes."
After the Irish Republican Army blew up the prime minister's hotel during the Conservatives' 1984 party convention in Brighton, wrecking part of the Thatchers' suite and killing five people, Denis Thatcher responded with an English stiff-upper-lip classic.
"It was quite a thump," he said. "You should have seen the bathroom."
Born into an upper-middle class family, Thatcher took over his grandfather's paint and chemicals company, Atlas Preservatives, after World War II service as an army officer. His wartime first marriage had ended in divorce.
He met 25-year-old Margaret Roberts in 1950 at a Conservative Party function. They married a year later and their twins, Mark and Carol, were born in 1953.
Thatcher sold the family company in 1965 to Burmah Oil, but remained in the business until he retired. He also was on the boards of several companies.
He is survived by his wife, his children and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
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