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The Right Honourable Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Bottomley (born March 12, 1948 née Garnett) is a British Conservative politician.
She read sociology at the University of Essex, and later studied at the London School of Economics. She was a researcher for Child Poverty Action Group and then became a social worker and a magistrate (Justice of the Peace).
She entered Parliament in 1984, as Member for Surrey South West, and got her first ministerial position in 1988, as junior Environment minister, and was appointed Minister of Health in 1989. In John Major's cabinet, she progressed upwards, becoming a member of the Privy Council and serving as Secretary of State for Health from 1992 to 1995, and then Secretary of State for National Heritage from 1995 to 1997.
Her "street cred" increased considerably in later years, when it become known that she had given birth to an illegitimate child while a teenager in 1967, though she soon married the father, Peter Bottomley, who also became a Member of Parliament.
Since the 1997 general election, she has remained an opposition backbencher. She is considered to be a 'One Nation Conservative'. In 2002 she announced that she would not contest the next election, and has become a headhunter for the charity and public sectors.
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