but not of it". Under her editorship the review's treatment of political matters sometimes attracted controversy. In 2006, an article by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt was criticised in some quarters for its claim that the foreign policy of the United States was in the grip of an "Israel lobby". Wilmers has herself said, "I'm unambiguously hostile to Israel because it's a mendacious state", an assessment which has not gone unchallenged. An article by the Cambridge historian Mary Beard, published after the events of September 11, 2001, attracted some attention for suggesting that "America had it coming", and when David Marquand, the political historian and principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, submitted a review praising Tony Blair's handling of the post-11 September period as "impeccable", Wilmers replied saying, "I can't square it with my conscience to praise so wholeheartedly Blair's conduct" and pulled the piece. Marquand announced that he was "utterly shocked". Honours A book of tributes to Wilmers, Bad Character, was published privately in June 2008 and distributed as a limited edition. In 2017 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, as well as being honoured with their Benson Medal. Personal life In 1968, Wilmers married film director Stephen Frears, with whom she had two sons, Sam and Will. They lived on Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town. Frears left Wilmers while she was pregnant with their second son Will in the early 1970s, and the couple divorced. Nina Stibbe, the live-in nanny that Wilmers hired in the early 1980s, wrote letters home that described the North London "literati" life; these were compiled, published, and adapted into the 2016 TV series Love, Nina. References Further reading 1938 births Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford British Jews British magazine editors British people of German descent British people of Russian-Jewish descent Living people People from Chicago