Louise Mensch - Biography

Biography

She was born on 28 June 1971 in London, England, the daughter of Nicholas Wilfrid and Daphne Margaret Bagshawe née Triggs. Her father comes from a family of Roman Catholic gentry; his grandfather was the marine artist Joseph Richard Bagshawe, who was himself grandson of one of the 19th century's most renowned marine artists Clarkson Stanfield, and a nephew of Edward Gilpin Bagshawe, Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham. Her paternal grandmother Mary Frideswide Bagshawe was the daughter of Charles Robertson, a stockbroker and benefactor of St Philip's Priory, Begbroke and one of the co-founders of Westminster Cathedral. She is the sister of Tilly Bagshawe, a freelance journalist and author, and also has a younger sister Alice and a brother, James.

Her family moved to the countryside when she was seven. She was educated at Beechwood Sacred Heart School in Tunbridge Wells, and Woldingham School, a Roman Catholic girls' boarding school in Surrey, and was named "Young Poet of the Year" in 1989 at the age of 18. After reading English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and following a six month internship at MTV Europe she worked as a press officer with EMI Records (a position from which she was formally dismissed), and then as a marketing official for Sony.

With parents who were active in the Party, Mensch had joined the Conservative Party when she was 14. But because of her religious background and the changing society she became increasingly critical of the Established Church of England and flirted with anti-monarchy groups. Consequently in 1996 she switched to the Labour Party, saying that she believed Tony Blair to be "socially liberal but an economic Tory" and secretly Catholic. By 1997 she had returned to the Conservatives, helped her mother, Daphne, win a seat in East Sussex County Council from the Liberal Democrats. and campaigned in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2001, Mensch co-founded the Oxonian Society with Joseph Pascal and Princess Badiya bint El Hassan of Jordan.

Louise Bagshawe married Anthony LoCicero, an Anglo-Italian Catholic property speculator. Louise and Anthony had three children, but after nine years the marriage ended in divorce. In June 2011, she married Peter Mensch, the manager of Metallica, Jimmy Page and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

She has criticised media outlets for repeated questions about her plastic surgery.

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