Samantha Cameron biography

Synopsis

Early Life

English Prime Minster David Cameron's wife, Samantha Cameron, was born Samantha Gwendoline Sheffield on April 18, 1971, in North Lincolnshire, Enlgand. She is the older of two daughters born to Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffied, 8th Baronet, a descendant of King Charles II, and Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones. She is a distant cousin of Diana, Princess of Wales. Following her parents' divorce, Cameron's mother married William Waldorf Astor, 4th Viscount Astor.

Cameron attended the School of St. Helen and St. Katherine, a private school for girls in Oxfordshire, and later took courses at the co-ed Marlborough College in Wiltshire. She studied at Camberwell College of Arts, and went on to study fine art at the University of the West of England's School of Creative Arts.

Family and Professional Career

Cameron married her husband, David, a Conservative, on June 1, 1996, in Oxfordshire, and they have had four children together. Their first child, Ivan, died at age 6 from a combination of cerebral palsy and a form of severe epilepsy.

"I think that ever since the day I met Dave, he has obviously taken his job very seriously and he loves politics," Cameron said of her husband, according to a March 2010 article in The Telegraph. "... I think so much of the Dave that I first met and fell in love with is Dave the politician."

Before her husband became Britain's prime minister, Cameron was a successful business executive—the creative director of Smythson of Bond Street, a London-based British manufacturer of luxury stationery, leather goods and fashion products. Having been with the company for 14 years, Cameron is said to have contributed in large part to improving Smythson's image, establishing the company as a fashionable and popular brand. Her work with the company won her a British Glamour Magazine Award in 2009 for "Best Accessory Designer."

On May 13, 2010—just two days after her husband was elected prime minister—Cameron announced that she was stepping down from her full-time executive role, and that she would be taking on a part-time consultancy role. Cameron attributed her decision to a new pregnancy, as well as the difficulty that followed the death of her eldest son, Ivan, in February 2009.

"I look forward to my changed role and balancing it with my new day-to-day life, as well as being able to spend more time with my children," Cameron told the BBC in May 2010.

Cameron had also worked for a time as the spokesperson for Taiwanese fashion house Shiatzy Chen.

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