Personal Life
He was appointed a CMG in 2001, and was knighted in the 2006 Birthday Honours, for services to broadcasting and journalism overseas. Wheeler was married to Dip Singh and the couple had two daughters: the barrister Marina Wheeler (the wife of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson) and Shirin Wheeler, the BBC's Brussels correspondent.
In June 2006 Charles Wheeler announced he had discovered that a painting by Alessandro Allori of Eleonora of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo de' Medici, which had been given to him in Berlin as a wedding present in 1952, had been looted during World War II. Via the Commission for Looted Art in Europe it was returned to its legitimate owner, the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, from whose possession it had been absent since 1944.
Wheeler died of lung cancer at his Horsham home on 4 July 2008.
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