Cherie, Booth Blair, 1954-

Cherie Booth, married name Cherie Booth Blair, (born Sept. 23, 1954, Bury, Lancashire, Eng.), British attorney specializing in issues of public law and human rights, among others. She is also the wife of Tony Blair, who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007.
Booth’s parents, Anthony Booth and Gale Smith, were actors, socialists, and Roman Catholics.
In 1976 Booth was offered a “pupillage” (trainee position) with a group of lawyers headed by the prominent British attorney Derry Irvine. There she met Blair, who had also been hired to train as a barrister. Blair and Booth married in 1980, by which time both were active in the Labour Party (she was widely regarded as more left-leaning than her husband). Both stood for Parliament in the general election of 1983. Whereas he won the traditional Labour constituency of Sedgefield in the north of England, she came in third in a normally Conservative part of Kent, southeast of London.
As her husband’s political career flourished, Booth focused on her legal career. She specialized in public law issues, such as workers’ rights and sex-discrimination cases. Following Blair’s election as Labour Party leader in 1994, the couple decided that she should continue her career but refrain from becoming, in the manner of U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a politically active wife.
Booth again caused a media stir in 2008 with the publication of her autobiography, Speaking for Myself, in which she provided intimate details of her private life as well as opinions on public figures and members of the royal family.