Personal Life
Thornberry has lived in Islington since the early 1990s. She has two sons (born December 1991 and July 1999) and a daughter (born November 1993). She married Christopher Nugee QC of Wilberforce Chambers in July 1991 in the borough of Tower Hamlets. He is a deputy High Court judge, and they live in Barnsbury. Since 1993 she has lived on Richmond Crescent, where Tony Blair lived until the 1997 general election, moving in on the same day that the Blairs moved in. She also part-owns properties in Guildford and South London.
In April 2005 it emerged that Thornberry had sent her son to the selective Dame Alice Owen's School fourteen miles away from her home and outside her constituency. The school was formerly based in Islington and still reserves ten percent of its places for Islington pupils. The Labour Party opposes selection and Thornberry was widely criticised over the issue as a result. Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools stated "I celebrate her good sense as a parent and deplore her hypocrisy as a politician. When will those who espouse the virtues of comprehensive education apply the logic of their political message to their children." The controversy had strong echoes of the cases of Harriet Harman, Tony Blair and Diane Abbott. Thornberry's daughter now also attends the school. She defended her position by stating she felt the school should not have moved from its original location.
Read more about this topic: Emily Thornberry
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)