Sarah Vine

Sarah Rosemary Vine (born April 1967) is a British columnist. She has written for the Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper, since 2013. She was previously arts editor at The Times.

Sarah Vine
Born
Sarah Rosemary Vine

April 1967 (age 53)
Swansea, Wales
NationalityBritish
OccupationJournalist
Political partyConservative
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 2001)​
Children2

Early life

Sarah Rosemary Vine was born in Swansea, Wales, in April 1967.[1] She has a younger brother who lives in Madrid, Spain. When she was five, the family moved to Italy, initially staying in Rome before moving to Frascati. She reports that she returned to the United Kingdom at the age of 16, and that she attended the comprehensive schools Hammersmith and West London, Holland Park School, and Lewes Technical College near Brighton.[2] Vine studied modern languages at University College London.

Career

After graduation, Vine worked in customer services for the retailer Hobbs Ltd. She then worked in a series of jobs within journalism, including TV listings sub at the Daily Mirror and features editor for the magazine Tatler, before joining The Times. She was promoted to arts editor at that newspaper.[3]

Along with Rosemary Davidson, in 2007 she co-wrote the book The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls.[4] She was a columnist for The Times for 15 years before joining the Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper, in 2013.[1] In 2019, she received the Columnist of the Year – Popular (2018) award at the Society of Editors' Press Awards.[5]

In March 2014, she and her husband's decision to send their daughter to Grey Coat Hospital comprehensive school in Westminster made Gove the first Conservative Party education secretary to have chosen the state over the private sector for their child's secondary schooling. In her Daily Mail column, Vine celebrated the "miracle" of state education and criticised private education, saying "Its agenda is a fundamentally selective one, based not only on ability to pay, but also on pupil potential. And it is also, let's face it, about snobbery".[6] Vine added that her decision to send her daughter to a state secondary school was motivated by a desire for her child to receive a broad education: "that you shouldn't judge people by their clothes, or where they live, but by who they really are. That, in my view, is the miracle of our state education system. Like the NHS, it welcomes all-comers. The state doesn't care where its pupils come from; all that matters is where they're heading."[6]

In November 2014, she wrote a column criticising food writer and activist Jack Monroe for mentioning the death of David Cameron's son in 2009 in one of a series of tweets criticising Cameron. Vine went on to question Monroe's decision to have a child herself, insinuating that her choice led to her own poverty. Monroe condemned the article as 'homophobic, transphobic, deadnaming, ignorant, and generally ghastly lies'.[7]

During the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Vine used her column to criticise Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, his wife and their 'forlorn little kitchen'. In the same column, she reported that her own kitchen was '10 years old' and that the 'hob has many knobs missing'. Private Eye magazine questioned this as it commented that £7,000 had been spent on the kitchen as part of her husband Michael Gove's MP expenses. Vine suggested that this was a 'twisted interpretation'.[8]

In the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership, she voted for the UK to leave the EU.[9] On 28 June, she accidentally sent a private email meant to be read by Gove and his close advisors to a member of the public, who leaked it to the press. In the email, Vine had advised her husband not to back Boris Johnson's bid to become leader of the Conservative Party unless 'specific assurances' were given to him.[10][11] Two days later, Johnson unexpectedly dropped out of the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election, after Gove made a surprise bid to become leader.[12]

Personal life

She has been married to Conservative MP and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove since 2001. They met when she was the arts editor and he was the comments editor at The Times newspaper. They have one son and one daughter.[13] Vine is the godmother to one of former Prime Minister David Cameron's daughters.[3]

In May 2020, Gove was criticised[14] after Vine shared a bookcase picture "as a very special treat for my trolls" which featured a book by the Holocaust denier David Irving, and a copy of The Bell Curve, which controversially claims that intelligence is highly heritable and that median IQ varies among races.[15][16] Another book in the photograph was The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray, which, according to The Guardian, cites Enoch Powell and argues for protecting white Christian Europe from "outsiders".[17] Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedom by Alain de Benoist, leader of ethno-nationalist think tank GRECE, and Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance and Archeofuturism - European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age by Guillaume Faye were also featured, both published by European New Right Arktos Media, known for translating far-right material into English.[18] One other book was Leo Strauss and the American Conservative Movement by paleoconservative Paul Gottfried, who coined the term 'Alternative Right' (often shortened to 'Alt-Right') whilst working alongside Richard B. Spencer.[19]

References
  1. Martinson, Jane (2 July 2016). "Sarah Vine: Daily Mail columnist and driving force behind Gove's PM dream". The Guardian.
  2. Vine, Sarah (7 March 2014). "Sarah Vine: Why I want my daughter to go to a state school". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  3. Hodge, Gavanndra (1 June 2017). "Exclusive! Sarah Vine's first ever interview". Tatler.
  4. Cadwalladr, Carole (12 August 2007). "Review: The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls by Rosemary Davidson and Sarah Vine". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  5. Mayhew, Freddy (3 April 2019). "Times titles win big at Society of Editors' Press Awards". Press Gazette. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  6. Adams, Richard (5 March 2014). "Sarah Vine praises 'miracle' of state education in Daily Mail column". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  7. Selby, Jenn (24 November 2014). "Jack Monroe: David Cameron 'uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric' to legitimise NHS privatisation". The Independent.
  8. Walker, Peter (24 March 2015). "The knives are out: Sarah Vine and Jay Rayner clash on Twitter over kitchens". The Guardian.
  9. Vine, Sarah (9 September 2017). "Voted Leave? It's one way to lose friends, says Sarah Vine". The Spectator. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  10. Swinford, Steven; Dominiczak, Peter; McCann, Kate (30 June 2016). "Michael Gove's wife Sarah Vine warned him about risks of backing Boris Johnson without 'specific' assurances on migration controls". The Daily Telegraph.
  11. Mason, Rowena; Kennedy, Maev (29 June 2016). "Michael Gove's wife exposes doubts about Boris Johnson with email blunder". The Guardian.
  12. Stewart, Heather; Elgot, Jessica (30 June 2016). "Boris Johnson rules himself out of Tory leadership race". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 October 2019.
  13. "Gove, Rt Hon. Michael (Andrew)". UK Who's Who. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
  14. "What's on Michael Gove's bookshelf? (And why it matters)". libcom.org. 6 May 2020. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  15. Singh, Anita (4 May 2020). "Michael Gove draws fire for owning book by Holocaust denier David Irving". The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  16. Zorzut, Adrian (4 May 2020). "Michael Gove and wife criticised for showcasing bookshelf which includes Holocaust denier's book". The New European. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  17. Hinsliff, Gaby (6 May 2017). "The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray review – gentrified xenophobia". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  18. Schaeffer, Carol (28 May 2017). "How Hungary Became a Haven for the Alt-Right". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  19. Chernikoff, Helen (29 August 2016). "Meet the Jewish 'Paleoconservative' Who Coined The Term 'Alternative Right'". The Forward. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
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