Lady Annabel Goldsmith

Lady Annabel Goldsmith (' Vane-Tempest-Stewart, formerly Birley'''; born 11 June 1934) is an English socialite and the eponym for a London nightclub of the late 20th century, Annabel's.

She was first married for two decades to entrepreneur Mark Birley, the creator of Annabel's. Annabel's was her husband's inaugural members-only Mayfair club.

She became Lady Annabel as a young girl in February 1949, when her father became marquess on the death of his father, the controversial Ulster Unionist politician The 7th Marquess of Londonderry.

She transformed from an unconfident and self-described "skinny, gauche young girl" into a socialite during the 1950s and 1960s.

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."

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.

She was never a drinker.

She chain-smoked until the age of 40.

Lady Annabel is the mother of Rupert, Robin and India Jane Birley and Jemima, Zac and Ben Goldsmith.

She has referred to herself as "an incredible mother, rather a good mistress, but not a very good wife".

With six children and five miscarriages, her primary vocation was motherhood, which prompted her to say: "I'm not judgmental about women who work, but I was so besotted with my children I never wanted them out of my sight."

She was also considered a mother figure by her nieces, Ladies Cosima and Sophia Vane-Tempest-Stewart, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

On 10 March 1954, at the age of 19, she married businessman Mark Birley at the Caxton Hall register office in London.

Subsequently, her father became a chronic alcoholic and died from liver failure at the age of 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.

Her eldest son Rupert, who was born on 20 August 1955, studied at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.

Her second son Robin (b. 19 February 1958) is a businessman, whose face was disfigured as a child when he was mauled by a tigress at John Aspinall's private zoo.

Having let him go near the pregnant tigress, Lady Annabel said, "It was my own fault. I was, am, angry with myself."

A London society hostess, during the 1960s and the 1970s, she gained notoriety in gossip columns for her extramarital affair with Anglo-French financier James Goldsmith, member of the wealthy banking Goldschmidt family of German-Jewish origin, who later became her second husband.

A descendant and heiress of the Londonderry family, her primary occupation has been as a mother of six children whose births span 25 years.

She is also an author, and the founder of the Democracy Movement, a Eurosceptic political advocacy group.

Among her children are the journalist and film producer Jemima Goldsmith and Zac Goldsmith, the former Conservative MP for Richmond Park.

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, Viscount Castlereagh, who later became The 8th Marquess of Londonderry, and Romaine Combe, who was the daughter of Major Boyce Combe, from Surrey.

During the 1960s, Lady Annabel was a constant presence at Annabel's, known as one of the grandest nightclubs of the sixties and seventies, where she entertained guests ranging from Ted and Robert F. Kennedy to Frank Sinatra, Prince Charles, Richard Nixon, and Muhammad Ali.

"I used to be there every night, even when I had three small children to take to school the next day. It was like a second home to me", she recalled.

She raised her three children with Birley at Pelham cottage.

Her first daughter India Jane (born 14 January 1961), the granddaughter of society portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley, is an artist.

Birley famously paid tribute to her by naming in her honour his renowned nightclub, Annabel's, which opened on 4 June 1963 and was run by Birley for more than forty years.

The Birleys separated in 1972 and later divorced in 1975 after the birth of her second child with James Goldsmith.

"Our breakup was because of Mark's infidelities, not because I fell in love with Jimmy", she told Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth after Birley's death.

Revealing that Birley had numerous other girlfriends from the beginning of their relationship, she added: "I think he was absolutely incapable of being faithful. He was a serial adulterer. Like a butterfly, he had to seduce every woman."

In 1986, he disappeared off the coast of Togo in West Africa, where he was presumed drowned.

"There really is nothing worse than losing a child – and there is something special about your first-born", she said, adding that, "Because I was so young when Rupert was born ... we were more like good friends than mother and son."

As the wife and ex-wife of two unfaithful men, she explained her marriage philosophy to the Times in 1987: "I can never understand the wives who really mind, the wives who set such store by fidelity. How extraordinary, and how mad they are. Because, surely, if the man goes out and he comes back, it's not actually doing any harm."