Personal Life and Family
Until her retirement at the 2010 general election, Widdecombe divided her time between her two homes – one in London and one in the village of Sutton Valence, Kent, in her constituency. She sold both of these properties, however, upon deciding to retire at the next general election. She shared her home in London with her widowed mother, Rita Widdecombe, until Rita's death, on 1 May 2007, aged 95. In March 2008, she purchased a house in Haytor, on Dartmoor in Devon, to where she has now retired. Her brother, Malcolm (1937–2010), who was an Anglican Canon in Bristol, retired in May 2009 and died of metastatic oesophageal cancer on 12 October 2010. Her nephew, Rev Roger Widdecombe, is an Anglican priest.
She has never married nor had any children. In November 2007 on BBC Radio 4 she described how a journalist once produced a profile on her with the assumption that she had had at least "one sexual relationship", to which Widdecombe replied: "Be careful, that's the way you get sued". When interviewer Jenni Murray asked if she had ever had a sexual relationship, Widdecombe laughed "it's nobody else's business". Widdecombe has a fondness for cats and has a section of her website devoted to all the pet cats with which she has shared her life.
In a recent interview, Widdecombe talked about her appreciation of music despite describing herself as "pretty well tone-deaf".
Read more about this topic: Ann Widdecombe
Famous quotes containing the words personal, life and/or family:
“The personal appropriation of clichés is a condition for the spread of cultural tourism.”
—Serge Daney (1944–1992)
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)