The Right Honourable Della Winn is the Minister for Sport and married to Geraint Winn. She was born on 8th August 1947, making her 64 or 65 during the time of Lethal White. She was born to two teachers in Wales and has been blind from birth due to bilateral microphthalmia, a condition that prevents the eyeballs from growing in utero. Before becoming Minister for Sport, Della Winn was a human rights lawyer and created a charity called Level Playing Field “to support young athletes and sportspeople facing challenges.”
Della and Geraint Winn had one child together, a daughter named Rhiannon. Tragically, Rhiannon took her own life at sixteen. The suicide is often mentioned in articles about Della, although she has never spoken publicly about the loss.
Della is a liberal democrat, though people of all political affiliations tend to admire her and believe her to be “whiter than white,” as Strike puts it. Strike first encountered her when he had been in the hospital recovering from the loss of his leg and was left with a “favorable impression of her intelligence and empathy.” While undercover in the House of Commons, Robin has a less favorable encounter with the Minister in which she finds Della Winn to show a “slightly unnerving display of arrogance.”
Strike later interviews Della at her home where she discusses her relationship with the Chiswells, her husband and Aamir Mallik.
Della Winn is described as “a woman of stately appearance, with gray hair swept back off a broad forehead.” She usually wears dark sunglasses except on the rare occasion where she wears prosthetic eyes.