Minister’s ‘sweet and lovely’ wife stays quietly dignified after cheating claims
Mother of three whose great-grandfather owned the Daily Telegraph will be horrified at effect on family
Martha Hancock wore oversized sunglasses yesterday morning as she braved the bank of flashing cameras outside her London home. The mother of three kept a dignified silence, refusing to comment about her husband’s alleged infidelity.
An old friend described her as “sweet and lovely”, adding that her family was “hugely important” to her and that she would be horrified about the effect it would have on her children.
Mrs Hancock, 44, an osteopath, has long protected her family life, opting to keep a low profile and largely avoiding big public events. Born Martha Hoyer Millar, she enjoyed a privileged upbringing, descended from a baron and a viscount. Mrs Hancock’s father, Alastair Hoyer Millar, 84, an Old Etonian, was secretary of The Pilgrim Trust between 1980 and 1996. The organisation supplies grants to preserve historically significant buildings or artefacts.
Her mother, Virginia Hoyer Millar, 70, is an antiques dealer who cofounded North West Eight Antiques.
She is the granddaughter of Frederick Millar, 1st Baron Inchyra, a British diplomat who served as an ambassador to West Germany from 1955 to 1956, and on her mother’s side, the great granddaughter of William Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, a Welsh newspaper publisher.
In 1928, Lord Camrose bought The Daily Telegraph in partnership with his brother, James Gomer Berry, the 1st Viscount Kemsley. On his death in 1954, Lord Camrose’s son, Seymour Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose, took over the chairmanship with his brother Michael Berry, Baron Hartwell, as editor-in-chief, before The Telegraph Group was bought by Canadian businessman Conrad Black in 1986.
Mrs Hancock’s brother, Chris Hoyer Millar, is a former journalist who retrained as a lawyer and now works in the commercial dispute resolution team for Penningtons Manches Cooper.
Mrs Hancock is said to have met her future husband while they were both students at Oxford University in the early 2000s.
Both husband and wife are dyslexic and the Health Secretary once revealed that dyslexia helped them “bond”.
The couple married in 2006 and have three children, a daughter and two sons aged 14, 13 and eight.
Like most political families, the couple split their time between a house in north London and their constituency home in Little Thurlow. ‘Thank God Martha is wonderful in looking after the children and looking after me and it’s really tough’
The minister told The Telegraph last year that lockdown had created the kind of educational challenges in his own household faced by countless others across the country, noting “of course, Martha’s borne the brunt of it”.
He later acknowledged that he did not take on an equal share of domestic duties at home.
“Thank God Martha is totally wonderful in looking after the children and looking after me and it’s really tough,” he said.
In an interview with the Financial Times in 2014, the MP revealed that his “work-life balance is a challenge”, adding: “I pay a lot of attention to timetabling.
“Both my professional and social and family time gets booked up a long way in advance and then you have to be strict about it.”
Mrs Hancock keeps a low profile online but has used her Facebook page to champion animal rights, encouraging friends to sign petitions calling for a ban on pig cages, chicken factory farms and the sale of eggs from caged hens.
She was last photographed with her husband at the England vs Scotland Euro 2020 match at Wembley a week ago.
Mrs Hancock, who was still wearing her wedding ring yesterday, works at a clinic in Notting Hill, west London.