Marina Wheeler

Marina Claire Wheeler was born on 5 December 1964 in West Berlin. Her father was Charles Wheeler, a BBC correspondent, and her mother was Dip Singh, of Indian Punjabi Sikh descent. She has an elder sister named Shirin Wheeler.

Wheeler attended Bedales School and later studied at the European School of Brussels. During her early education, she developed a friendship with Boris Johnson, who later became a prominent journalist and politician. In the early 1980s, she enrolled at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, where she contributed to the student magazine Cantab.

Following her graduation from Cambridge, Wheeler worked in Brussels for four years. In 1987, she was called to the Bar and practiced as a barrister in London at chambers located in One Crown Office Row. Her legal specialization includes public law, human rights, mental health law, and discrimination claims. In January 2004, she was appointed to the B-Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown. She joined the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal in 2009 as a barrister member.

Throughout her legal career, Wheeler has expressed perspectives on discrimination cases, noting that a significant proportion are ill-founded and that unregulated advisors may not always act in the best interests of claimants. In February 2016, she was elevated to Queen's Counsel. As of October 2023, she was announced as an advisor to the Labour Party on strategies to protect women from workplace sexual harassment and discrimination.

In her personal life, Wheeler married Boris Johnson, her childhood friend, on 8 May 1993. At the time, she was pregnant, and Johnson’s previous marriage had recently ended. The couple has four children. In September 2018, they announced their separation after 25 years of marriage, and in February 2020, they finalized their divorce.

In 2019, Wheeler disclosed that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer earlier that year and underwent two operations to achieve remission.

She is also an author; her 2020 memoir, titled *The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab*, details her family’s history involving the Partition of India. Her maternal family migrated from Sargodha in West Punjab (now in Pakistan) to India following Partition. The book was shortlisted for the 2021 RSL Christopher Bland Prize.

External links associated with her include a YouTube presentation of her memoir, *The Lost Homestead*.