This piece was originally published in 2011.

Ann Widdecombe has never been one to avoid confrontation.

When she has an opinion to voice, she expresses it directly, whether challenging Craig Revel Horwood on Strictly Come Dancing or engaging with the nation's most prominent politicians, including the Prime Minister himself.

The former Shadow Home Secretary certainly maintains strict rules for guests visiting her Haytor residence, situated on Dartmoor's eastern fringe, which she purchased in 2008 for its stunning vistas and walking opportunities, intending to live there permanently.

"No outdoor shoes. No foul beasts" announces a notice prominently displayed on her lounge door.

Removing my shoes, I momentarily question whether my photographer might qualify as a foul beast, an amusing thought.

Managing the various people working efficiently throughout her property (Sarah the assistant, Phil the curtain fitter, a tradesman and several others, while handling calls from a determined ITN producer), Ann proves instantly hospitable and approachable.

"Can I get you coffee? Biscuits?"

She swiftly determines who requires her undivided focus (myself) and allows the remaining workers to continue their duties as she guides me into the lounge.

We position ourselves on opposite green sofas, beside expansive windows overlooking the remarkable landscape, and my allocated interview time commences. Or at least, I presume there is an allocated slot, but as the conversation progresses, it becomes apparent that this is a relaxed and contented Ann, thoroughly enjoying retirement, who is perfectly willing to give me as much time as necessary.

She doesn't so much as blink when the photographer proposes whisking her off to the moor for some blustery outdoor shots. She is – just as she was on Strictly – absolutely game for it.

"If you'd said to me a year ago, Ann, you're going to be dancing on prime time television, do a live tour, play Wembley (amongst other places) then you're going to go into pantomime with Craig Revel Horwood... I'd have said, 'Lie down and have an aspirin'," she chortles.

"But it happened. I think the great thing about retirement is that I've managed to accept what a lot of the commentariat can't – I'm no longer a politician. They were all saying, 'Is it fitting for her to be doing Strictly Come Dancing?' Well it wouldn't have been, if I were an MP. But I'm not an MP. I realised, almost before I'd retired, that the minute I was no longer a politician, was the minute that I was no longer obliged to behave like a politician."

She smiles, gleefully. "I'm completely free. I'm open to opportunities. And Strictly opened up a whole future that I would never have expected. I was offered a bit part in Grease, in the West End, and I was so sad I couldn't take it up, because it clashed with the Strictly tour. They wanted me to play the rather prim headmistress, which I think I'd have been ideally suited to, but I couldn't do it. A part in the West End would have been such fun!"

Her stint in pantomime over Christmas, where she will serve as "Widdy in Waiting" alongside Craig's Wicked Queen at Dartford's Orchard Theatre, promises to be a riotous twice-daily spectacle — one that her devoted former constituents in nearby Maidstone in Kent are unlikely to miss (a seat she held for 23 years before standing down at the 2010 General Election).

She remains receptive to further showbusiness ventures. "I'm working on my fifth novel, and I'm planning my autobiography. Basically, I don't know what's coming next, and that's the joy of retirement. You grab what comes along!"

One opportunity that notably failed to materialise, however, was her elevation to the House of Lords. She had genuinely anticipated that, upon announcing her departure from the Commons, a peerage would swiftly follow.

She had even been making plans, as Baroness Widdecombe, to scrutinise the practices of debt collection agencies. "Yes, I would have liked it (a peerage)," she says, "but it's not been offered, so there's no point in dwelling on it. I'd always thought I was a natural candidate because I'd been in parliament for 23 years, I've held a string of ministerial offices, I've been the Shadow Health Secretary and the Shadow Home Secretary, I did more than most going round the country to Conservative Associations. But obviously, in Cameron's eyes, I wasn't."

Could it be down to the fact that, in 2005, Ann backed Ken Clarke for Tory leader and famously told Radio 4's Today programme that Mr Cameron was "too young"?

Or perhaps her decidedly un-Tory stance on fox hunting?

Or her unrelenting position on abortion?

Or her opposition to the ordination of women — the principal reason she departed the Church of England in 1993 to convert to Catholicism?

Or could it simply be her well-known reputation for being overly domineering, preachy and abrasive?

"I don't know," she sighs. "You'll have to ask him. I suspect it's because I'm too traditional and I was against a modernisation programme. And I suspect he just thinks, you know, that he doesn't want me around."

Her unrelenting and forthright position on virtually every issue would certainly not lend itself well to the compromises demanded by coalition politics. "I hate coalitions," she says.

"But this one is a necessary evil. Cameron's only option was a minority administration at a time of economic chaos, which would have been an irresponsible option. So I think all people of responsibility should wish it well for the duration of this parliament – obviously I wouldn't want it going on for longer than that."

To be fair, Cameron did offer Ann, now 63, the Vatican posting – as ambassador to the Holy See – and she did want it, but the timing proved problematic.

"I had all manner of doubts about it, then I had a detached retina in July, and the eye just sort of settled it," she says.

The choice of where to settle down came down to Dartmoor versus the north west Highlands – both big walking areas, which was her priority.

The West Country prevailed because a) it's less remote, b) she has family connections and c) it's warmer for swimming, which she loves.

"I know the area well," she says. "My father was born in Saltash. My mother was born in Plymouth. I've still got an elderly aunt and a cousin in Saltash, and a cousin in Torquay, although that's about it.

"I used to come down here a lot visiting relatives and things like that, and then, when I was older, I walked a great deal on Dartmoor, initially with my father, and then in later years on my own, or with a companion."

Rambling is her passion, and nowadays she frequently ventures out for hours, striding up to Hound Tor and further afield. "When you're walking out on the moor on your own, miles from anywhere, and you don't see another human being for days, or you only see them in the far distance, then yes, you certainly can feel closer to God."

Born in Bath, Ann was educated at a naval school in Singapore and a convent school in Bath, before reading Latin at Birmingham University, and subsequently at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Her father, James, was a civil servant at the MOD. Following his death in 1999, her widowed mother Rita moved in with Ann until she passed away in 2007.

"I always said, whichever parent went first, I would look after the other," says Ann, matter-of-factly.

She had an elder brother, Malcolm, ten years her senior, who served as an Anglican Canon in Bristol. He passed away from cancer in October last year, with Ann's nephew, the Rev Roger Widdecombe, conducting the service.

From a remarkably young age, she knew that a career in politics was her calling.

"I wanted to fight socialism, but if you say that to an 18-year-old today they just look at you blankly. People think it's something to do with New Labour, and of course it isn't."

Her first unsuccessful venture into politics came in 1979 when she contested the seat of Burnley in Lancashire, followed in 1983 by another fruitless bid to unseat David Owen in Plymouth Devonport. Undaunted, she ultimately triumphed at Maidstone in 1987.

Ann has never walked down the aisle nor had children. She has, however, experienced true love.

There exists a wonderful photograph of her in her twenties, taken during her time as a student at Oxford — where she studied philosophy, politics and economics — looking slender, polished and, one might venture, rather alluring, with her hair cascading over her shoulders and a velvet choker adorning her neck.

His name was Colin Maltby, and in 1973 he was elected President of the Oxford Union.

They must have been intoxicating, thrilling times.

"Yes, there was someone at Oxford," she says. "We had a three-year-long romance, and I think a lot of our friends thought that we were going to get engaged. But it didn't happen."

She did, however, "rather assume that I would find somebody else and marry. But it was always a mixture of choice and chance that I didn't. Chance, because Mr Right just didn't come along. Choice, because he was never a big enough priority to go out looking for."

Colin went on to wed and forge a prosperous career as a banker in Geneva.

Ann has ended up living just a stone's throw from Widecombe In The Moor.

It is abundantly clear she has never lost her sharp wit. She has christened her new home Widdecombe's Rest.

"A lot of people think it means rest, as in having a rest," she laughs. "But what it actually means is the rest of Widdecombe's life!"

This article originally appeared in Devon Live.