I’m sitting in the drawing room of Jacob and Helena Rees-Mogg’s five-story townhouse in Westminster, just around the corner from Westminster Abbey. 

I’ve come to see Lady Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair Rees-Mogg – known, at her insistence, to family and friends simply as Helena.

This is the woman who fell in love with and married politician Jacob Rees Mogg in 2007. To some her husband is a posh, privileged twit – to others he’s a lovable English eccentric.

Jacob and Helena have everything – a grand country estate, a beautiful town house, plenty of money (after her inheritance, says Tatler, their combined fortunes will be around £150 million) and six lovely children. And now they have their own five-part Reality-TV series, Meet the Rees-Moggs. 

They’re being sold as Britain’s answer to the Kardashians – minus the mega-watt bling and monumental bottoms.

Dressed in a black Laura B dress, Helena, 47, sits before me erect like a schoolgirl sitting an exam. 

One day she stands to inherit something in the region of forty-five million pounds from her mother Lady Juliet Tadgell – thanks to her property interests in Britain and America and her extensive art collection. But, despite the obvious privilege, she seems practical and down to earth. Unflappable.

Born in 1977, Helena is the daughter of the poet and aristocrat Somerset de Chair and Lady Juliet Tadgell. 

Lady Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair Rees-Mogg and her husband Jacob are starring in a new reality show, in which she proves herself surprisingly down to earth  

Helena is the daughter of the poet and aristocrat Somerset de Chair and Lady Juliet Tadgell

Her mother is the only daughter and sole heir of the late 8th Earl Fitzwilliam who was killed in a plane crash with his mistress Kick Kennedy, sister of President JFK.

So why did Helena agree to what she calls the ‘Mogg-umentary’. They don’t need the money. They don’t need the fame. 

She insists that Jacob thought it was just a documentary ‘showing the life of a working constituency MP’ (he was the long serving MP for Northeast Somerset until he lost his seat in the 2024 election) and, like a good Tory wife, she played along. 

Happily, Lady Rees-Mogg is not too horrified by the results. ‘I was worried they’d be filming us in our underwear! I think we can all be grateful that didn’t happen.’

Anyway, right now Helena has Christmas to think about. This year, it’s being held at their country home, Gournay Court, in Somerset (which they bought in 2010 for £2.9 million). 

Given that Jacob has been dubbed by detractors as “the Honorable Member for the 18th century”, it is perhaps fitting that the family festivities should be taking place in a nine-bedroom historic pile. 

Along with various in-laws – including Helena’s wheelchair-bound mother Lady Tadgell (89) – there will, of course, be Helena and Jacob’s six children. 

Their names are a charming roll call of uber poshness: Peter Theodore Alphege (17) Mary Anne Charlotte Emma, (14) Thomas Wentworth Somerset, Dunstan (14) Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam (12), Alfred Wulsen Leyfric Pius (8) and Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher (7).

The couple with their six children (left to right) Peter, Sixtus, Thomas, Mary, Alfred, and Anselm and the family’s nanny Veronica Crook 

Six excited kids, a dozen guests, one odd-ball (Jacob), one nanny plus Daisy the dog – that’s a pretty combustible combination. 

I pump Lady R-M for some colourful Christmas anecdotes (teenage tantrums? drunken uncles?) but she is having none of it.

‘Lots of noise and chaos’ is all she will concede. That’s the trouble with posh people these days – they have no idea how to behave badly. 

‘I’m lucky. I have lots of help on the domestic front,’ she continues. ‘And I don’t have to do the cooking either – which is lucky for all concerned!’

Helena is a Christmas traditionalist. When she hangs up the Christmas cards – they get around 200 a year – she makes sure that the string ‘blends with the dark mahogany wood.’

This kind of attention to detail must be stressful. Helena says not. The seasonal challenge is ‘getting six kids to write thank you letters for their presents in a timely manner. It’s like dragging a whale up a beach.’

For Helena, Christmas starts early. 

‘It begins in the January Sales. I know that’s a terrible admission. But I usually have up to fifty people on my Christmas list to get presents for, so I like to start nice and early.’

I wonder, what do the very conservative Jacob and Helena consider suitable presents for their children? Books of Latin proverbs? 

No, they get the same stuff other kids get: the bike, the jumper, the video game, the book. But is she careful not to spoil them? ‘Yes, a bit. They know that if they ask for things like a Rolex or a Ferrari I’ll just say no, get lost!’

Helena pictured with her sons Alfred and Sixtus on the ferry to France

Christmas for the family will be a traditional affair with their six children and their nanny Veronica (left of Helena), who also looked after Jacob as a child

When it comes to the tree and its decorations, Helena has firm U and Non-U beliefs.‘It must be real. It must be as tall as possible. We always get a Nordmann Fir.’ (These can cost up to £890.) 

As for lights she insists on, ‘good old-fashioned coloured fairy lights with lovely big bulbs and not those little LED ones. Sorry, but no tasteful white and definitely no flashing lights!’

As for tinsel, it ‘must be approved Christmas colours – red and gold but no green (gets lost in the tree.)’ The more the merrier is her bauble edict and the selection will include the handmade ones bearing each of the family’s names.

‘Christmas morning always begins with going to church,’ says Helena. They are a devout Catholic family. 

After church it’s time for a little champagne and the opening of presents. Lunch is brought in at 1:15 pm. It’s your traditional fare – Turkey, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets – but they don’t do starters – or have a ham or goose. 

Wine is served, but no one drinks too much. The eighteen-seater table is decorated (by Helena) with little fir trees, reindeer and nut crackers.

At 3pm it will be time for the King’s speech. Everyone is expected to stand at attention (under the watchful gaze of Helena’s ancestors looking down from the walls) when the playing of the national anthem starts. Then, after a dog walk, ‘probably a little more champagne and present opening.’

And that’s Christmas done – at least till the January sales start.

As I am leaving, Helena enquires about my Christmas plans.

‘I’m coming to your house, of course!’

At this announcement the unflappable Lady looks, at least momentarily, just a little flapped.