Quinn refuses to comment on Blunkett's downfall

As her staff at the Spectator tucked in to their Christmas lunch yesterday, magazine publisher Kimberly Quinn was refraining from any celebratory public statement on the demise of David Blunkett.

Quinn, 44, who is seven months pregnant, awoke to a rash of newspaper headlines proclaiming the downfall of her former lover in dramatic and emotional terms.

"Destroyed by the woman he loved," said the Sun's front page. "The man who loved too much," declared the Daily Mail.

They will have made distressing reading for Quinn, who was discharged from the private Lindo wing of St Mary's Hospital in west London only two weeks ago.

She had been admitted several days earlier after collapsing at home under the strain of the affair. Since then she has been preparing not only for the birth of her second child, but for what promises to be a fresh round of her legal battle with Blunkett, who is claiming paternity of her 2-year-old son.

Although Justice Ryder rejected her bid to delay legal proceedings over access to the child until April, when she will have recovered from giving birth, she is expected to continue to fight Blunkett every step of the way. She is said to be particularly distraught at his decision to make the first round of proceedings public.

It is believed that she will now be summoned to a closed session of the High Court's Family Division in the new year.

A mediator, appointed by the court, is expected to sit in on a secret session where representatives from both parties will seek to thrash out a deal acceptable to both parties.

The private hearing could last for up to eight hours.

No comment was forthcoming from Quinn's husband, the 60-year-old multimillionaire Conde Nast publisher Stephen Quinn, on what the family's legal strategy would be. In the past he has urged the media to leave his wife in peace, insisting the couple's problems were behind them.

But, as if the pressure of impending birth coupled with what could be a demanding day in court, is not enough, there is also the matter of Sir Alan Budd's inquiry into the visa row that engulfed Quinn's former lover. Quinn is said to have drafted a letter to Sir Alan requesting an opportunity to give evidence in person. The former senior Treasury official visited her and took evidence last week.

According to friends of the Quinns there is no feeling of jubilation at this week's events. One is reported as saying: "I do not think [Stephen] has any triumphant feeling about Blunkett."

Yesterday, Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, the newspaper that has ventilated many of the most damaging allegations against Blunkett, denied it had been used by Quinn, whose Spectator magazine is part of the Telegraph Group.

He said she had been "very upset" at its disclosure that Blunkett was the father of her 2-year-old son.

"That was something that was not given to us by Kimberly and she was very upset that we should have revealed that."
He told BBC Radio 4's Today: "I deny the charge that we were only the conduit of Kimberly Quinn. Like any newspaper, we published things that both sides had told us."

- INDEPENDENT