The PM’s wife who Britain could not hold down

Speaking for Myself, By Cherie Blair, 420pp, Little Brown, 110 yuan

By Chu Meng

The women behind male world leaders are a timeless topics of public curiosity.

Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the first British first lady to hold her own career, was no exception. Ongoing fascination with her life has helped drive sales of her memoir Speaking for Myself, published in May 2008 on the anniversary of the couple’s departure from 10 Downing Street.

Last Wednesday evening at the Bookworm, Blair spoke about the book, her career and efforts to aid women around the world. She and her family were in China on a sightseeing tour to the Shanghai Expo.

Known professionally as Cherie Booth Queen’s Council, Blair, 56, is a British barrister working in England and Wales and the mother of three sons and a daughter. She grew up in a single-parent family and graduated at the top of her class in law school.

In 1976, while studying to become a barrister, she met future prime minister and husband Tony Blair, whom she wed four years later.

But neither marriage nor the move to 10 Downing Street could shake her from her career.

“I felt most of the controversy about me in the British media was due to my pioneering role as the first wife of a British Prime Minister who had her own career, with the media simply not knowing how to treat me fairly and objectively,” she said at the book talk.