Mary Wakefield

Mary Elizabeth Lalage Wakefield (born 12 April 1975) is a British journalist, and a columnist and commissioning editor for The Spectator. Early life Wakefield is the daughter of the antique and architectural expert Sir Humphry Wakefield, 2nd Baronet and Hon. Katherine Mary Alice, daughter of Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale, a colonial administrator in Africa. She has two brothers; Maximilian Wakefield (born 1967), an entrepreneur and racing car driver, and Jack Wakefield (born 1977), former director of the Firtash Foundation and an art critic who writes for The Spectator and other publications. A third brother, William Wakefield, was born in 1975 and died in infancy. Wakefield was educated at the independent girls' boarding school Wycombe Abbey and at the University of Edinburgh (MA). Family provenance Through her mother, she is descended from Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale, the Governor of Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, and Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, a Governor General of Canada, and through the latter, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, of the House of Grey, a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, after whom Earl Grey tea is named.