American-born femme fatale whose affair with a British politician, David Blunkett, caused a scandal in the UK in late 2004. The break-up of the relationship in summer 2004 was so bitter that by November that year, allegations were swirling that Blunkett had used his position to help his former nanny to acquire two different visas. In addition, the paternity of Quinn’s two-year-old son was questioned.
Quinn began the three-year affair with David Blunkett, former home secretary, nine weeks after she married her second husband, millionaire publisher of Vogue, Stephen Quinn. At age 60, he had three children from a prior marriage but had undergone a vasectomy so that he and his bride could have a child. The break-up of Kimberly Quinn’s affair has now brought into question whether the couple’s two-year old son is Stephen Quinn’s or Blunkett’s. At the time the affair had become a scandal, Kimberly Quinn was pregnant with her second child due in February 2005, also with paternity in question. She had been a high-powered publisher of The Spectator but went on sick leave from her position at the end of 2004.
Quinn has been in publishing in the UK since the 1980s. She grew up in the United States, the daughter of wealthy parents whose father Marvin Solomon became rich through his business (radiation detection equipment). Her mother was an actress using the name of Lugene Sanders. Quinn attended Vassar but graduated from Oxford University; she began her career as a secretary to the founding editor of “Cosmopolitan” before moving to “Woman’s Day” in 1983, ultimately becoming an editor of a trade magazine in the US. In 1987, she married her first husband, American investment banker Michael Fortier and they moved to the UK. She joined Condé Nast in the mid- ’90s and took the Spectator job in 1996. She divorced Fortier in 2000 and married Quinn in the summer of 2001. Her new husband was publishing director for Condé Nast’s GQ magazine. At a dinner party in August 2001, she met David Blunkett, England’s Home Secretary, and they embarked on a secret affair. In the summer of 2004, Quinn ended the affair saying she wanted to return to her husband who had forgiven her.
Quinn has been described by a female colleague as a seductress, not because of any great beauty or fashion flair but because she makes men feel important. “When you sit next to her at dinner, she really does make you feel that she is interested in you and what you have to say.”
Link to Wikipedia biography