Michael Gove’s Oxford don ex-girlfriend is facing trial for possession of child abuse images

By REBECCA CAMBER, CRIME AND SECURITY EDITOR and MARK NICOL, DEFENCE EDITOR 13:16 13 Oct 2026, updated 18:38 13 Oct 2026

An Oxford University lecturer who was in a relationship with Tory peer Michael Gove is facing trial on child abuse image charges.

Dr Lola Salem, 33, who until recently was the girlfriend of the former Cabinet minister, has been charged with possessing multiple indecent photographs of a child.

She has now been suspended by Oxford’s Oriel College, where she has been a lecturer in music since 2022.

She has pleaded not guilty to the offences. There was a short procedural hearing in her case at Oxford Crown Court on September 30, at which a date for her trial was set in March 2028.

Salem was the girlfriend of Lord Gove for more than two years. But the Daily Mail’s Eden Confidential diary revealed earlier this month that they had split. Lord Gove confirmed to the Mail last night: ‘We are no longer in a relationship.’

News of their romance emerged when the pair arrived together at The Spectator summer party in July 2024, shortly before the Tory peer was named editor of the magazine.

Months later, the 59-year-old former Cabinet minister, who is 25 years older than Salem, was photographed kissing her at the London celebrity hotspot J Sheekey. The alleged offences took place before Lord Gove met Salem.

Salem has been charged with having in her possession between May 19, 2021 and February 13, 2023 three category B indecent images of children, which is the second most serious type.

She is also accused of having a less serious category C indecent image of a child between April 6, 2021 and February 13, 2023.

The academic denied the charges at a pre-trial hearing earlier this year and remains on bail ahead of her trial, which is expected to last two to three days.

It is understood that she will argue in her defence that she was sent the four images unsolicited and that she reported them to the police.

Salem was charged by Thames Valley Police in May this year along with Henry Hopwood-Phillips, a historian and geopolitical analyst. They both wrote for the The Critic magazine as freelance contributors.

Hopwood-Phillips, 39, founded a Singapore-based political consultancy that specialises in analysing China’s geopolitics.

In June he admitted two counts of taking an indecent photograph and two counts of distributing indecent photographs of a child at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court.

He was handed a 15-month suspended sentence, a sexual harm prevention order and made subject to lifetime sex offender notification requirements.

Born in France, Salem was a talented singer as a child and trained at Maîtrise de Radio France, a prestigious children’s choir school operated by the French public broadcaster.

She was educated in Paris, excelling in her musicology studies at the École Normale Supérieure before taking an aesthetics and art philosophy degree at La Sorbonne, where she won a young scholar prize.

Salem then moved to Oxford to obtain a PhD in music, specialising in how female singers shaped operatic repertoire and institutional practice at the Paris Opera, before she became a Marshall Research Fellow.

Between 2021 and 2023, she worked as head of development at the Canterbury Institute, an independent centre for research and learning in Oxford, before lecturing in French at Wadham and St Catherine’s Colleges between 2022 and 2024.

In 2023 she was selected as a Civic Future Fellow and later became a member of the Civic Future Leadership School, an organisation training individuals for potential public office founded by Munira Mirza, the former head of the Downing Street policy unit under Boris Johnson.

According to a page listing her achievements on Oriel College’s website, which has since been deleted, Salem has ‘taught music papers across the University of Oxford since 2018’ and is considered an expert on ‘contemporary debates about the governance of the arts and the future of cultural institutions’.

She describes herself as a ‘researcher, cultural and institutional strategist’, and on LinkedIn she highlights her relationships with ‘senior decision-makers’ in the UK.

She no longer teaches students at either Oriel or Wadham and St Catherine’s Colleges.

A spokesman for Oriel College said: ‘Oriel College was made aware of serious charges against an employee in June 2026. This employee was suspended, pending the outcome of legal proceedings.’

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