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Petronella Wyatt (born 1969, London) is a British journalist and author. She is the daughter of the late Labour MP and writer Lord Wyatt and a Hungarian baroness.

Education

She attended St Paul's School in London before reading History at Worcester College, Oxford and University College, London.

Career

She has been a weekly columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, of which she was deputy editor. She currently writes political interviews and main feature articles for the Daily Mail. Her interviewees have included Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague and Gordon Brown.

It was alleged that she had had an affair with Boris Johnson, fellow journalist on Spectator and politician, and that she got pregnant and underwent an abortion when Johnson refused to leave his wife for her. Her father's diaries, published after his death, mentioned that Archbishop of Canterbury once stared at his daughter Petronella's bosom for a long moment. Woodrow Wyatt's critics targeted her father's attempt to get her entry into an Oxford College as a misuse of political influence.

For six months commencing in 2003, Petsy lived with American Charles Bruce Berry at his home in Charlottesville, Virgina, where she participated in his horse-and-hound centered lifestyle. Many of her columns in late 2003 focus on her experiences in the US foxhunting and observing American holidays such as Thanksgiving. She foxhunted with Farmington Hunt in Virginia, where members called her "Petrified Petronella," when they were not staring at her breasts, whose cleavage was remarkably exposed, despite her hunting attire.

According to Berry's ex-wife, Charlotte von Lilienfeld (her father was West Germany's Ambassador to the United States from 1961 to 1968, to Iran from 1968 to 1974 and to Spain from 1974 to 1980), Petsy happily left the States just before Christmas of 2003 "screaming" because Berry had been so emotionaly and verbally abusive to her. Little did he know that he was serving as her "beard" as she flew from the charms of Boris Johnson. Many people she interacted with in Charlottesville thought she seemed "drowsy," "drugged up," or "on tranquilizers."

Television appearances include Question Time and Newsnight.

Publications

• Father, dear Father: Life with Woodrow Wyatt (Hutchinson, London) ISBN 0-09-929760-4

• 1969 births
• Living people
• English journalists
• Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford