Juliet Gardiner

Juliet Gardiner is a British author editor commentator and historian of British social history from Victorian times through to the post WWII era She read history at University College London where she was awarded the Meyer Prize as a first class honours finalist in 1976 and failed to finish a PhD In her autobiography Gardiner writes that she was born as Olivia to an unmarried mother from Italy At the age of two she was adopted by a Hemel Hempstead sanitary inspector named Charles Wells and his wife Dolly Her new parents renamed her Gillian On 18 February 1961 she married George Gardiner a British Conservative Party politician and journalist During the next couple of years she stopped being Gillian and became Juliet She would later describe being married to a Conservative politician as being like a vicars wife who doesnt believe in God There were three children but in 1980 the marriage ended in divorce