Personal Life
Bottomley is involved with charitable and academic bodies in addition to business. She is a Governor of the London School of Economics and a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Surrey. She was on the founding Council of the University of the Arts, London. She is also a Council Member of the Ditchley Foundation and President of Farnham Castle Centre for International Briefing. From 2000 until May 2012 she has sat on the Supervisory Board of Akzo Nobel. She is a non-executive director of Bupa. She is on the Advisory Council of the International Chamber of Commerce UK (ICC UK) and the Judge School of Management, Cambridge. Bottomley has been a trustee and is a fellow of the Industry and Parliament Trust. She was National President of the Abbeyfield Society and a Vice-Patron of Carers and of Cruse Bereavement Care. She is a lay Canon of Guildford Cathedral, and a Freeman of the City of London. In 2006, she was elected and installed as Chancellor of the University of Hull, succeeding Lord Armstrong of Ilminster in April 2006. She was also appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey in March of that year.
Virginia Garnett married Sir Peter Bottomley in 1967; since 1975 he has been an MP. They live in Milford, Surrey and also maintain residences in London and Worthing; they holiday on the Isle of Wight. They have three children, Cecilia, Adela and Joshua. Peter and Virginia Bottomley had been parents together before their marriage...
Her brother, Christopher Garnett, is a former chief executive of the GNER railway, and Peter Jay, the former British Ambassador to the United States, is a cousin, as are Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Labour), Lord Oakshott of Seagrove Bay (Lib-Dem) and Baron Jay of Ewelme, former British Ambassador to France. Her stepmother is Dame Julia Cleverdon who married Bottomley's father, John, late in his life. She is also related to the Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt and the Times journalist Isobel Oakeshott and she is connected to the former Economic Secretary to the Treasury and MP Kitty Ussher.
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