Lady Annabel Goldsmith - Background and Image

Background and Image

The second of three children, Lady Annabel was born in London into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family with its roots in Ulster and County Durham. Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart was born the daughter of Robin Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who later became the 8th Marquess of Londonderry, and Romaine Combe, who was the daughter of Major Boyce Combe from a middle-class family in Surrey. She became Lady Annabel as a young girl in February 1949 when her father became Marquess on the death of his father, the famous Ulster Unionist politician the 7th Marquess of Londonderry. Her mother died of cancer in 1951, but the illness was kept a secret by her parents. She later said, "Cancer was such a taboo then - Mummy didn't even tell her sisters." Subsequently, her father became a chronic alcoholic and died from liver failure at 52 on 17 October 1955. "My father was a really wonderful man but after my mother died, we couldn't talk to him as we had done before. He couldn't face life without her and he turned into Jekyll and Hyde almost overnight", she explained.

She was named after her mother's favourite song, "Miss Annabel Lee", and grew up as a country child at her family's former estates of Mount Stewart, Wynyard Park, and Londonderry House. She was educated at Southover Manor School in Sussex and Cuffy's Tutorial College in Oxford. Awkward and shy in her youth, she was an avid reader, equestrian, and a Girl Guide for the Bullfinch Patrol. She transformed from an unconfident and self-described "skinny, gauche young girl" into a socialite during the 1950s and 1960s. Queen Elizabeth II attended her coming-out ball in 1952. As part of the London social circle, she is known for her sense of humour, down-to-earth personality, and love of children and dogs. Though never a drinker, she chain smoked until the age of 40.