Marina Wheeler

Marina Claire Wheeler QC (born 18 August 1964) is a British lawyer, author, columnist and estranged wife of British prime minister Boris Johnson. As a barrister, she specialises in public law, including human rights, and is a member of the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal. She was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2016.

Early life

Marina Claire Wheeler was born to BBC correspondent Sir Charles Wheeler and his second wife, Dip Singh, an Indian Punjabi Sikh; her ancestry goes back to the city of Sargodha in West Punjab, present-day Pakistan, with her maternal family migrating to present-day India after the Partition of India.

She was educated at the European School of Brussels, and then in the early 1980s at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where she wrote for the student magazine Cantab.

At the European School, she became friendly with Boris Johnson, later a journalist and politician. Her sister, Shirin Wheeler, is an EU spokeswoman.

Career

After Cambridge, Wheeler returned to Brussels and worked there for four years. In 1987 she was called to the Bar, practising from chambers in London at One Crown Office Row. In her work as a barrister, Wheeler specialises in mental health matters and discrimination claims. In January 2004 she was appointed to the B-Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown. In 2009, she joined the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal as a barrister member.

Of her legal work, Wheeler has stated:

My own experience, shared by many colleagues, is that a high proportion of discrimination cases we deal with are ill-founded. One colleague puts the figure at more than 60 per cent... Many unregulated advisors make a living bringing discrimination claims, and they do not always seem to have the best interests of the Applicant in mind.

In February 2016, she became a Queen's Counsel.

Family

On 8 May 1993, a pregnant Wheeler married her childhood friend Boris Johnson, whose previous marriage had been annulled a couple of weeks earlier. They had met again and teamed up together in Brussels, where he was covering the European Parliament for The Daily Telegraph. Their eldest daughter was born on 12 June 1993. Together they have four children: Lara Lettice, Milo Arthur, Cassia Peaches and Theodore Apollo.

In September 2018, Johnson and Wheeler announced that they had separated "some time ago", following continuing allegations of marital infidelity against Johnson. It was also announced that divorce proceedings had started. They reached a financial settlement in February 2020.

In August 2019, Wheeler revealed that she was diagnosed with cervical cancer earlier in the year and had undergone two operations to be in remission.