Kirstie Mary Allsopp is a British television presenter, best known as co-presenter of Channel 4 property shows including Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK, Relocation, Relocation and Location Revisited.
Background
Allsopp is the daughter of Charles Henry Allsopp, 6th Baron Hindlip, a former chairman of Christie's, by his marriage to Fiona Victoria Jean Atherley McGowan. She has a younger brother Henry, and two younger sisters, Sofie and Natasha. Owing to her father's peerage, she is entitled to use the courtesy styleThe Honourable Kirstie Allsopp. The designer and businesswoman Cath Kidston is her cousin. She attended ten schools as a child, including St Clotilde's in Lechlade, Gloucestershire, and Bedales, near Petersfield, Hampshire. After spending time in India teaching English, Allsopp returned to the UK and began a series of positions, working for Country Living and Food & Homes Magazine and her mother's business, Hindlip & Prentice Interiors, and studying at Christie's. Allsopp set up her own home search company, Kirmir, in 1996, focusing on top end purchases in Central and West London. Allsopp was reported in 2008 and 2009 to be an advisor to the Conservative Party on housing matters, but has denied this. In August 2014, Allsopp was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.
Personal life
Her partner is property developer Ben Andersen, and they have two sons, born in 2006 and 2008. She is also stepmother to her partner's two children, Hal and Orion, from a previous relationship. They live in London. In 2009 they, along with another family, bought and restored a house in rural Devon called Meadowgate, which had been empty for 39 years. The restoration and interior decorating were the subject of the TV series "Kirstie's Homemade Home". It was again the setting for her "Kirstie's Homemade Christmas" programme showing people how to have an individual Christmas using secondhand and homemade products such as wreaths from material found in the nearby wood. In 2014 Allsopp revealed to The Times that her mother, who died on 6 January aged 66 from breast cancer, had been buried, at her own request, in a wicker coffin, in the garden of her Dorset home.
