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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 rose through the ranks to become a
Minister of State at the Home Office and then 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 no-nonsense advice
to families on a variety of problems. She also presented an episode
focusing on the Reformation and its impact on the common people of the
time as part of Channel 4’s documentary series Christianity: A History
broadcast in February 2009. In 2010, as part of Channel 4’s documentary
series on The Bible, Ann presented a programme entitled ‘Moses and the
Law’.
Other TV/radio credits include Ready Steady Cook,
Countdown, Celebrity Fit Club, Ann Widdecombe Versus, LBC 97.3, Louis
Theroux Meets…., Grumpy Old Women, Question Time, Any Questions and Have
I Got News for You.
Ann 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, An Act of
Brotherhood.
Ann has a column in the Daily Express every Wednesday.
In 1993, Ann became a Catholic, and met the Pope in
1996. |
