Veronica Judith Colleton Wadley, Baroness Fleet, (born 28 February 1952) is the chairman of Arts Council London and board member of Arts Council England (2010–present). She is a director and trustee of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. She was a senior advisor to the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson (2012–2016) and the co-founder and chairman of the London Music Fund (formerly the Mayor's Fund for Young Musicians) from 2012 to 2016, where she remains a Trustee & Chair. She is also a non-executive director of the Berkeley Group and an independent Director of Times Newspapers Holdings. Prior to this, she was the editor of the Evening Standard (2002–2009) and previously deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph. Early life and career Wadley was born in Chelsea to Lieutenant Colonel Neville Pierce Wadley, MC, and Anne, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Hautayne Bowring, Royal Field Artillery, of a landed gentry family of Larkbeare, Exeter descended from Sir John Bowring, fourth Governor of Hong Kong. Anne's maternal grandfather was Sir Robert Colleton, 9th Baronet. She was educated at the independent Francis Holland School in central London and at Benenden School in Kent. She was employed by Condé Nast (1971–74), working on Vogue, before travelling to South Africa where she worked as a journalist for three years. She subsequently joined The Daily Telegraph colour magazine (1978–81) and The Mail on Sunday for five years before rejoining The Daily Telegraph in 1986 remaining there until 1996, being appointed deputy editor in 1994. She has also worked on the Daily Mail as deputy editor and features editor (1996–2002). Editor of the Evening Standard A journalist, Wadley was editor of London's Evening Standard from February 2002 to February 2009, during which time it was owned by Associated Newspapers. She was the first female editor of the paper. During her seven years at the Standard, she championed the arts and chaired the Evening Standard Theatre awards and Film awards. After Alexander Lebedev acquired the Standard in 2009, he replaced her with former Tatler editor Geordie Greig. The newspaper was particularly critical of the then London Mayor, Ken Livingstone. This came to a head in the run-up to the 2008 London mayoral election, in which Wadley's newspaper attacked Livingstone's record. According to articles in The Guardian and Time Out London, she was strongly influenced by the need to renew Associated Newspaper's multimillion-pound contract to