Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Garnett was born in Dunoon, Scotland, to Barbara Rutherford-Smith, Jarrow hunger marcher, a teacher and elected Conservative member of the Inner London Education Authority and W. John Garnett CBE, former director of what was then called The Industrial Society, grandson of Cambridge physicist and educational adviser William Garnett and of Sir Edward Poulton, Hope professor of zoology at Oxford.

[5] She was a psychiatric social worker with the Institute of Psychiatry, a magistrate (Justice of the Peace), and she chaired an Inner London Juvenile Court.

[6] After unsuccessfully contesting the Isle of Wight in the 1983 general election (34,904 votes), she was elected to Parliament with 21,545 votes in a by-election in 1984 (filling the seat left vacant by the death of Maurice Macmillan, son of former prime minister Harold Macmillan),[7] as the Member for South West Surrey.

[13] Bottomley and Ann Widdecombe have been listed as co-founders of Lady Olga Maitland’s pro-nuclear Women and Families for Defence group.

[11][15] During this period, she appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest 1996, wishing luck to the United Kingdom's entrant, Gina G, in her postcard.

[16] After the 1997 general election, she returned to the backbenches, and became a headhunter at Odgers, where she headed and now chairs the company's Board & CEO Practice.

[7] On 24 June 2005 she was created a life peer with the title Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, of St Helens in the County of Isle of Wight,[11][18] the parish where she was baptised and celebrated her marriage.

More distant relatives include Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay[29] and Baron Jay of Ewelme (former FCO PUSS and British Ambassador to France).