Ann was born on in Bath, Somerset in 1947. Her family moved around, following her father's work in the Navy, first to Portsmouth, then to Singapore, before returning to England.
Wide-ranging education
She was educated at the Royal Naval School Singapore and La Sainte Union Convent, Bath and has two degrees; one in Latin from Birmingham University and one in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. At Oxford she was secretary, then treasurer of the Oxford Union, and on the committee of the Oxford University Conservative Association.
After working in marketing at Unilever from 1973 to 1975 she was a senior administrator at London University from 1975 to 1987, during which time she was a district councillor and stood as a candidate in two general elections. In 1987 she was elected Member of Parliament for Maidstone (which became Maidstone and The Weald in 1997).
In the House
As an MP, Ann Widdecombe rose through the ranks to become Shadow Health Secretary in 1998 and Shadow Home Secretary in 1999. In July 2001 she announced her decision to retire from the Shadow Cabinet, because she wanted to be able to speak on issues which she felt strongly about without the constraints of being a Front Bencher. She also wanted to spend more time with her elderly mother and to devote more time to her writing career.
Writer and broadcaster
As well as being a high-profile MP, she is well-known for her journalism and broadcasting, including her own prime time programme on BBC2, Ann Widdecombe to the Rescue, in which she acted as an agony aunt travelling around the country offering advice to families on a variety of problems.
Anne Widdecombe has also written four novels: The Clematis Tree (2000), An Act of Treachery (2002), Father Figure (2005), and An Act of Peace (2005), and is currently working on her fifth, The Idealists. In 1993, she became a Catholic, and met the Pope in 1996.
