Theresa Villiers
British politician (born 1968)
Dame Theresa Anne Villiers (born 5 March 1968) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chipping Barnet from 2005 to 2024, having previously served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2005. A member of the Conservative Party, Villiers was Minister of State for Rail and Aviation from 2010 to 2012, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2012 to 2016 and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2019 to 2020.
Early life
Villiers was born in Hunstanton, Norfolk, in 1968, the third child of George Edward Villiers by his marriage to Anne Virginia Threlfall; she has two elder brothers, Edward and Henry. On her father's side, she is a descendant of Edward Ernest Villiers (1806–1843), brother of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, Thomas Hyde Villiers, Charles Pelham Villiers, and Henry Montagu Villiers, and a direct descendant of King Edward II.
Growing up in North London, she was educated at the independent Francis Holland School. Villiers gained a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree with first-class honours in 1990 from the University of Bristol, and a year later the postgraduate degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from Jesus College, Oxford. After university, she qualified for the bar at the Inner Temple, and worked as a lecturer at King's College London from 1994 until 1999.
Member of the European Parliament
Villiers was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the London constituency in 1999, and was re-elected in 2004. She stood down following the 2005 general election when she was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chipping Barnet.
She served as Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament between 2001 and 2002. She also served as a member of the governing board of the Conservative Party during this period.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Theresa Villiers” as british politician (born 1968). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british politician (born 1968). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q266793. VIAF identifies the subject as 50976713. The Library of Congress control number is n97086382. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2005, 2024 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theresa Villiers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.